The Exorcist
by Ophium
Summary: With every fringe religious group Zachariah recruits in his search for Dean, the odds of 'enlightening' the wrong person escalates. Ready to say Yes to Michael, Dean sees his plans come to an unscheduled stop at the hands of a foe he did not expected.
1. Chapter 1

Well, here it is, part one of the story I promised ages ago to **reapertownusa**:) I hope you like it!

The initial idea for this story came from a recent episode of Dexter. I'm not gonna go into details, because I don't want to spoil that show for those who see it, but a single image from there sprouted this whole thing here, so... go Dexter! From there on, it's my own evowl and twisted mind at work :D

Humm... warnings and stuff: the story is an AU that starts off right at the end of '99 problems' and should resume canon by the time they hit 'The devil you know'. As **reapertownusa** and myself share a *cough*... taste for bloody, suffering Dean, as well as a... *cough* propensity for messing with the poor guy's head, expect both of those in this story. Other than that... well, you know _my _Dean swears a lot more than the CW's, so, there's that ;)

Big thank you to **jackfan2**, my all around awesome-beta and sounding board. All remaining mistakes are mine.

* * *

><p>THE EXORCIST<p>

* * *

><p>Dean pulled angrily at the chains, eyes focused on the links looped around the metal ring on the floor. Like before, it was of no use.<p>

The cuffs around his wrists bit into his skin, reminding Dean of his failure to get those open as well. They had been his first target, easy locks that he could pick in his sleep... if only he had any_fucking_thing that could be used as a lock pick.

The damn ring on the floor seemed to be bolted to the very foundations of the building and no amount of pulling and jerking and twisting seemed to even loosen either chain or ring.

It didn't help that he could barely bend his arms and put some serious strength on the task at hand. The sick fuck who had left him there had kept the length of chain so short that Dean's choices were either kneeling or laying curled around the metal ring.

Actually, he had woken to find himself cuddling the damn metal thing, like it was some kind of fluffy and sick teddy bear. Which was funny, considering that, when he'd come to earlier, he'd seen just that; a filthy, headless teddy bear, yellowed-white stuffing spilling out, lying not three feet from Dean was.

The sound of dragging chains had roused him from the dark. There was dust in the air, heavy and mischievous, tickling his nose and scratching his throat.

The sneeze that exploded from Dean's chest as he woke was the full-body kind, the ones that started in your nose and, when released, make you shudder all the way to your toes.

It brought with it the clatter of more dragging chains.

And snot.

When Dean had lazily moved his hand, intent on wiping the wetness he could feel sliding down his nose, the bitter reality of his condition had presented itself in all its lovely shades of fucked up.

Relying on sound alone, there was no denying that the dragging chains and his movements were related. His hand had stopped midway through, jerked back into its previous place with a snap of metal around his wrists.

Even before acknowledging the wrongness of his situation, Dean already had a pretty good idea of what he would find when he opened his eyes. It made him wish that he could just ignore all the facts around him, the ones screaming in chorus that he was in deep shit. All the clues that were telling him that he was not where he was supposed to be.

But that wouldn't work. See, when it came to getting into and out of shit, deep, shallow or anything in between, nobody had more experience than the Winchester brothers, and ignoring the facts would get him no closer to figuring out his current predicament. So, opening his eyes, he acknowledged with a tired sigh, was a required first step.

Not that it was an easy first step. The dirt had permeated everything, even his closed eyelids. It was like pulling against an insanely heavy curtain but eventually he was blinking against the gritty feeling, several seconds later, his gaze focused on the beheaded teddy bear.

Rolling to his back, Dean had turned his gaze up higher. And inverted angel figure was looking back at him. Not the Castiel-kind but the Hallmark kind, complete with fluffy wings and a white gown.

This one, however, wasn't on the cover of any sentimental postal card. It was painted in delicate glass, a mosaic of color decorating a high window.

There were more beside him. More angels, saints, prophets and martyrs. All glorious in their flat depictions of piety and righteousness.

His head hurt, but at this point, Dean couldn't really tell if that was due to the bruise he could feel pulsing all the way from his ear to the top of his head, or because of his hungry stomach.

The last thing Dean remembered was leaving, Sam and Castiel fading in his rear view mirror. He'd run away like a thief in the night, unable to keep on dealing with so many people dying or condemning their souls to Hell. Not when there was something that he could do about it; not when there was something that he was _supposed_ to do about it.

Or so everyone kept telling him.

Dean remembered bright lights, some douche driver with his car's headlights set too high; he remembered the bone-jarring jolt and realizing that someone had hit his car from behind; he remembered up becoming down and thinking that his car deserved better than that.

And now he was here.

"Hello?" Dean rasped, shuffling until he was on his knees. There was an old pew in front of him, bolted front leaning forward until it almost touched the floor, the back seat ripped off its frame. A contrite pew, seemingly ashamed of being the last one standing.

Other than a few carton and wood boxes, rumpled and dirty clothes and several discarded syringes, the place was mostly empty. A drug addicts' paradise, he supposed.

A ratty mattress on the far corner had lost most of its cover and was stained in so many flavors and shapes that it was impossible to tell its original color anymore.

There was straw and dirt and dry leaves on the floor. And bird shit. There was no possible way to ignore the bird shit. It was everywhere. Including the piece of marbled floor where Dean found himself stuck.

The chains jerked against a sudden tremor that wracked Dean's body. He looked down and swore; well, at least whoever the hell had brought him here and chained him to the floor had been considerate enough to leave him his boxers and shirt. He had probably inhaled fifty different diseases from lying on that floor, but hey! at least he still had _some_ clothes on.

The anemic marble floor where he lay, with its pink veins over white slab, seemed to be all that was left of the church's altar. There were no figures left, not even the big Guy hanging from His cross.

Since he'd woken up, Dean had been trying to figure out what flavor of asshole had driven his car out off the road and taken him to an abandoned church. The location alone could not be random.

Demons, angels, horsemen or any of the freak-squad that the impending apocalypse had unleashed on Earth, it was hard to take a guess.

Demons, Dean figured, were not exactly the type to use something as crude as a car to get to him, but then again, there were some inventive bastards on the loose. If he were a betting man, Dean would put his money on Meg.

If this, on the other hand, was the work of Zachariah and his fucktards, it would be sort of ironic and all kinds of amusing… given that Dean had run from Sam with the intent to call that particular dick-angel and get him a phone line to Michael.

Jesus… it was hard even to give up!

All Dean had wanted was to see some friends one last time, make some arrangements and then give himself off as a sock-puppet to be used at will by the dickiest of all archangels ever. Was it really that much to ask to have that at least go right?

There was light coming through the painted windows, slowly dimming as the hours passed. Once the sun set, Dean was left in the gloomy dark, without so much as the company of the painted saints as the tainted glass became bleak and solid like the rest of the walls.

There was an annoying pingpingping of water, coming from some leaky pipe that Dean could not see. The sound, however, was doing nasty things to his dry mouth. He could almost imagine each one of those tiny droplets of water hitting his tongue instead of the floor.

Lulled by the rumble of his stomach and weariness that thirst was beating down on his body, Dean curled the best he could around the ring on floor, trying to find a position that wouldn't cramp his arms. It had happened before already and he was not eager to repeat the experience.

Tomorrow. He would make his way out of there tomorrow.

* * *

><p>Sam started packing the minute the Impala's tail lights disappeared in to the night. He had no idea what he'd do after that, but Sam knew it would start with stealing a car and end with him stopping Dean from doing something monumentally stupid.<p>

He should've known. From the minute Dean had stood up, dazed and staring at the dead corpse of the Whore of Babylon, Sam should've known that in his heart, Dean had already made a decision.

People didn't just suddenly become 'true servants of God' out of the blue; Dean had walked into the basement of that church with a firm belief that he was going to stop shit like that from happening ever again. And, of course, Dean being Dean, selfless, stupid, sacrificial-to-the-point-of-suicide, this was the only way to go.

"So, you're just gonna leave?" the preacher asked, his face still pale and gaunt after all that he had witnessed that evening. Sam figured that it would take a long time for the people of that town to recover from the damage the Whore had done.

Even if he didn't have his brother to chase, Sam knew he wouldn't stay there to deal with the aftermath. Things were too painful and messed up for the Winchesters to do that anymore.

"I need to catch up with my brother before he throws it all away," Sam said quietly, back turned as he stuffed everything into one pack. Dean hadn't even bothered to take his clothes. From the looks of Castiel's rumpled but still intact suit and trench coat, Dean had probably figured he wouldn't be needing any more clothes where he was going.

Which was nine kinds of fucked up and only made Sam pack faster.

"Why? Where do you think he went?"

Sam turned to face the preacher then. It was a good question. With the marks on their ribs keeping their location hidden from all angelic beings and their voices mute to all angelic ears, Dean would have to find someone to call the archangel for him.

"Some place big enough to have a religious nut-bag or two," Sam realized suddenly. He was pulling out a map and unfolding it over the bed covers even as the idea formed in his head.

Dean had told him about the end of the world 'prophet', preaching outside that motel in Kansas City, the one who had ratted him out to Zachariah. If it hadn't been for that guy, Zach would never have gotten the drop on Dean and sent him 'back to the future'.

And if he knew his brother well, Sam knew that Dean would count on that connection to get in touch with either Zachariah or Michael himself this time around.

The next city was at least a three-hour drive away. Sam looked at Castiel, lying prone on the bed where Dean had dropped him. The angel was still apathetic and numb, and if Sam were to risk it, he would say still hangover. Whatever the Whore had done to him, it had sapped the angel of all his strength and power.

It was too bad. Sam could've used the head start to get to the city ahead of Dean. "Will you stay here for a bit? Make sure that he's alright?" Sam asked the preacher. He felt slightly bad for abandoning the two like that, but someone had to stop Dean.

The preacher nodded, looking confused. Sam couldn't blame him. There was not much he could do anyway.

"Cass," Sam called out, crouching near the unresponsive angel. Dull, blue eyes remaining focused on the TV's empty screen, like he was just waiting for his favorite show to start. "Cass… I need you to call me as soon as you can, okay?" he went on, prying the angel's right hand open and placing a cell phone there. "I could really use your help with this," Sam finished with a whisper.

"Maybe I could help?" the preacher offered. The shock seemed to have worn off his face some, enough for him to realize that Sam was one step away from panicking. "Anything?"

Sam grabbed his backpack, stuffed full of his and Dean's things and gazed one last time at the room. "Pray… pray that I'm not too late," Sam asked before closing the door behind him.

The sunlight woke him the second time around. Dean had been sure he wouldn't be able to sleep a wink under such circumstances. His body, however, seemed to have had other ideas.

Nothing had changed. There were still crows, perched on every high niche in the room, the marble under his body was still cold as fuck and his wrists were still attached to the floor by a short length of chain.

His bladder was full, which sucked as fairness went, because Dean's throat was parched. As far as he could see it, it was a damn waste of water for his body to want to throw it away like that.

Contorting his body so he could reach the front of his boxers, Dean pulled the fabric down, and with barely a shred of modesty, aimed as far as he could from the place where he was bound. There was nothing to be done about the smell, but at least he wouldn't be lying on his own piss.

Tucking himself in, Dean remembered the paperclip he's sewed to almost every pair of underwear he and Sam owned. He dragged himself closer to the ring on the floor, struggling to reach the hem of the boxers with his right hand.

It was gone. Like every other weapon and piece of wire that Dean usually carried on his person, it was gone.

Dean ground his cheek against the cold marble, growling the frustration away. Why did he have to be grabbed by the smart psycho?

His stomach growled, reminding Dean of just how hungry he was. He ignored it, told it to shut the fuck up. More than the hunger, more than the thirst even, it was the slow crawling of time that was starting to get to him.

He was there, wasting time, playing some sick fuck's games, while outside, there were people dying. People Dean could save if he managed to grab hold of Michael's voicemail.

Whoever was responsible for him being there, they were taking their sweet time starting the introductions. "Get the fuck in here, you son of a bitch!" Dean yelled to the empty room. The hoarse boom of his voice managed only to send the once calm crows into a winged frenzy of flight. "Fuck!"

Time passed slowly. Dean altered between lying on his back, which put his arms in an awkward and painful position, and standing on his knees, which was all kinds of fucked up for his joints.

As day slowly moved into night time, Dean began to wonder if he hadn't been brought to that place to simply be left to die.

* * *

><p>Sam had put everyone on high alert. Called everyone they knew, checked with anyone who might bump into Dean. It was the first thing he did, after driving like a bat out of Hell towards the closest big town and checking into the first motel he could find.<p>

Minneapolis seemed like the logical choice, if Dean's intention had been to go straight for the exit and check out of life without saying goodbye to anyone.

The thing about Dean though, was that, at heart, he was a sentimentalist. He'd go on and on about growing no attachments, keeping no sort of connections with the people they meet, strictly 'love'em and leave'em' approach to every woman he took to his bed.

In reality, Dean knew by heart the name of everyone they'd ever saved, and everyone they'd failed to save and, okay, he might not remember the names of all the women he'd had sex with, but the few he did remember, he carried those in his heart with fondness.

Despite Michael's promises that he would not leave Dean a drooling mess once he was done with him, Sam knew that Dean wasn't taking that for granted. For one, it was an archangel's promise and, while most people would trust it to be truthful because of that, Dean expected it to be bullshit for the very same reason.

In his mind, Dean had already known that there would be no coming back from this decision of his. And that was why Sam hoped that his brother would stop to say some goodbyes along the way and that Sam would stumble on at least one of the people he called.

So far, however, no one had seen hair of hide of Dean. Bobby assured him that he would be putting his feelers out as well, before joining him in the search, but Sam could hardly sit by the phone and wait.

It was a good thing that someone had come up with a version of phones that you could actually carry around with you.

Minneapolis was one big city. Sam'd never had any problems with big cities, certainly not in the same way as Dean, who was constantly irked by them. But, after what felt like his hundredth red light, Sam now decided he hated cities. This one in particular, especially when he couldn't find a single clue of Dean's whereabouts anywhere.

Taking a calculated risk, Sam had spent hours downtown, talking to every street preacher he could find atop an apple box and every lunatic of religious persuasion he could see walking about. Some of them, Sam could tell as he showed them a grainy picture of Dean -that he'd amplified from one of their fake ID cards until it was mostly just faded pixels- looked like they'd seen Dean's image before, but none knew the name of the man on the photo.

Sam figured that, when Zachariah had made his rounds, he must've given all sort of information about Dean to his newest 'recruits'. However, it was far easier to remember a name than it was a face or even the model of a car.

Sam was sure that Zachariah had been in touch with some of those doomsday's announcers... but none of them had been the one to deliver Dean to the angels.

* * *

><p>"Ah," a man's voice, a stranger's voice, echoed through the empty space, scattering away the flock of crows that had been witnessing Dean's misery for the last couple of days. "You're awake. Good."<p>

Dean twisted around, trying to catch a look of the speaker. His body was stiff and sluggish, feeling as if he'd slowly turned into the very stone he'd been chained to while hours had become days and still no one had come for him. Until now. He was almost happy that someone had finally shown up.

Shuffling his chain around, Dean managed to drag himself to his knees, mustering his remaining strength to circle his way until he was facing his captor.

Dean had to blink hard and resist the urge to rub his eyes.

The skeleton thin man, shaved of all hair and walking towards him, wearing nothing but what looked suspiciously like an adult's diaper and a walking stick, could not be an angel or a demon. Demons were vain and pretentious creatures; they wouldn't be caught dead in _that_.

And the only angel Dean had ever seen wearing something other than a suite had been that cupid fella… and that one was wearing even less than this guy.

No, what ever this anorexic sumo wrestler was, it wasn't any of Dean's usual playmates. In fact, there was only one brand of fruitcake that usually reached these levels of insane. Humans.

"Who the fuck are you?" Dean eloquently asked, his voice raspy and barely above a whisper. Day two of his captivity had been, unwisely, spent yelling at the empty walls. "T'hell do you want from me?"

"Dean... are you a man of faith?" the diaper-man asked, his tone unmoved by all the venom in Dean's questions.

Dean remained silent, his rage slowly seething underneath his skin. The freak knew his name; he knew exactly who Dean was... If this guy wasn't incline to answer Dean's questions, then could shove his own questions up his as—

"I can see that you're not," the man said, sounding disappointed with his own conclusion. "Faith protects men, Dean," he went on, circling his prisoner with methodical, slow steps. His walking stick made punctuation marks with every step he took, the pockpockpock noise as irritating as the man's presence. "Men without faith become vulnerable, Dean... like you. Tell me, Dean, has evil robbed you of your tongue?"

Dean thought about sharing a few choice words with his captor, but he knew it would be pointless, like throwing rotten eggs to an empty wall. All he would be left with was the nasty smell.

The man stopped his circling, closing his eyes as he extended his arms. He stood there for a minute, still as a statue, light bouncing off his shaved skin like the sun itself felt disgusted for touching the man.

When he finally opened his eyes, the man in diapers opened a small, black book. His voice boomed across the empty church, "_'__Jesus__ was __driving __out __a __demon __that __was __mute, __and __when __the __demon __had __gone __out, __the __mute __person __spoke __and __the __crowds __were __amazed. __Some __of __them __said,__"__By __the __power __of __Beelzebul, __the __prince __of __demons, __he __drives __out __demons__'_."

The walking stick, turned out, was a multipurpose tool for the crazy man spouting out nonsense. And walking was hardly its main function.

The first strike hit Dean across his upper back, sending him crashing to the floor with a disgruntled yelp, more indignation than pain. The second hit lower, sending lightning bolts of pain up and down Dean's spine and he couldn't help but scream.

The lunatic in diapers was as methodical with his rod as he'd been with his walk as he slowly but surely covered Dean's body with angry welts.

* * *

><p>It was becoming painfully clear to Sam that Dean was not in Minneapolis. Or anywhere on Earth, as far as it seemed.<p>

Sam kept an eye on the news, dreading each time a special, last minute report came in. Every single time, he was sure they were going to show him images of Dean, destroying some city or entire country, as Michael battled Lucifer.

So far, however, all the bad news was of the 'normal' kind. Floods, fires, massacres and epidemics. Just your average day on a pre-apocalyptic world.

"Zachariah is still looking for Dean, same way as us," Castiel chipped in, in his own way trying to lift Sam's spirits. "Are you certain that it was Dean's intention to give himself to Michael when he abandoned you?"

The angel's voice was so filled with hope that it was almost pitiful to hear, even if his choice of words stung.

When he'd arrived and learned what Dean had done, Castiel had been angry, angrier than Sam ever remembered seeing him. Such was the faith the angel put on Dean that he had felt Dean's defeat as a personal betrayal.

To some extent, Sam knew exactly how that felt. His gut reaction was to say yes, absolutely yes. Of course Michael had been the reason why Dean had left them all behind without looking back twice.

Three days had gone by since Dean had left Blue Earth and once Castiel had join him in his search, Sam still had nothing to go on. The longer it went by without hearing anything about Dean or Michael, the less sure Sam could be about Dean's reasons.

Maybe Dean's purpose had been to simply disappear. Drop off the face of the Earth and leave angels and demons and the rest of the world to fend for themselves.

It was a possibility that Sam found very difficult to even consider, not because it implied Dean was running away like a scared coward but simply because Sam couldn't picture Dean ever doing something like that. even if, after all he'd been through, all that he'd suffered, Dean was more than entitled to chose the easy way out.

Easy, however, had never been Dean's way... no matter what he said to women.

"Yes," Sam finally answered the angel. "You didn't see the look on his face, Cass," he reminded him. "You didn't see how lost and desperate Dean was as he looked around at those people, hundreds of souls bound to Hell because the Whore had tricked them," Sam said, his voice sad and disappointed. At himself, mostly, for having failed to see that sooner. "Dean left Blue Earth with the sole purpose of finding Michael."

"Of betraying us, you mean," Castiel pointed out, his blue eyes burning hot with fury. "And yet Michael remains without his vessel."

Sam nodded, choosing not to amend the angel's words. He knew his brother's reasons to give in like that the same way he knew Castiel was bound to see nothing but the bigger picture and fail at grasping the details.

Dean's engraved tendencies to self-sacrifice meant that he would always put the lives of a few over his own; Castiel's wider view stopped him from understanding the strategic value of risking a key-piece in a hopeless move. They would never see eye to eye on something like this.

"Someone stopped him," Sam suddenly realized. Even as the words were leaving his mouth, he realized that it was the only reasonable explanation. "Someone stopped Dean from reaching Michael."

Castiel tilted his head, as if weighing the value of Sam's theory. "If that is so, then we owe this person our thanks."

* * *

><p>There was blood crusted over his left eye. Which was all the same, because Dean lacked the energy to open both of them.<p>

Peeling his right eye open, he waited for his vision to stop wavering and focus on the dirty floor.

Moonlight was dancing off the ever present dust, silver particles floating in a blue reality that was almost pretty to look at.

Dean figured he'd fallen asleep –most likely passed out- sometime after Mr. Crazy-no-pants had tired of turning Dean's skin as blue as his surroundings.

Sadly, Dean was sort of used to having the living snot beaten out of him by this and that dick looking for answers. Or just for pure revenge, like Zachariah was so fond of doing.

This guy, however... he didn't want to know anything. He hadn't even bothered talking to Dean as he'd mercilessly beaten him, sticking to just reading from his stupid little book. And on the one time Dean had managed to catch his breathe for long enough to try and say something, no-pants had proceeded to viciously strike him in his throat. After that, everything had blurred together in one big haze of continuous pain.

There was something shimmering near him. Dean could see it from the corner of his one working eye. Shifting slowly on the floor, hissing as bruises scrapped against the cold floor, Dean moved until he could see what it was.

Water.

The bastard had finally left him some water.

Urging his stiff arms to work, Dean pushed himself to his knees, chains dragging all around him. The nearness of such precious liquid gave him more strength than he could hope for but, still, his fingers trembled as Dean curled them around the small bowl. He licked his lips in anticipation as water sloshed inside the container, anticipation only making his hands shake harder.

One small sip, Dean tried to tell himself. There was no way of knowing when the nutbag would be coming back, or if it was in his plans to give Dean anymore water. He had to make this one last.

Just one small sip.

His mouth, however, had other plans. The water was stale, left in the dust for too long, but it still felt like the most delicious thing ever as it slid down Dean's parched throat. The last drop of it trickled down Dean's chin before he could stop himself from drinking it all.

Enraged by his lack of restraint, Dean tossed the bowl away with a howl. The cheap plastic bounced and rolled away until it came to a stop near a pile of empty crates.

The two gulps he'd managed to drink had barely been enough to drive Dean's thirst away.

Out of spite, he gave a hard pull on his chains, watching dispassionately as the skin around his wrists broke all over again. Dean sagged against the floor, like a puppet whose strings were slowly cut, one by one.

His stomach had finally stopped rumbling, settling for a dull pain that got lost amidst all the others. Skin... the body's biggest organ, Dean had read it somewhere. There was no way his stomach could ever compete with _that_.

Dean laughed in the dark, blood-curling giggles that echoed around the empty structured and returned to him in distorted versions of his skewed sense of humor.

He was losing it.

* * *

><p>Sam was losing his mind. While they sat on their asses, clueless about where Dean might be or who might've taken him, Lucifer was busy causing havoc in the world.<p>

Bobby, who in lack of a pair of wings had taken a little bit longer to join Sam and Castiel at the motel room that had become their center of operations, was sitting in one of the beds, newspaper hiding his face from view. "Hail storm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana," he read. "People saying the '_hail __was __bigger __than __a __tennis __ball__'_. And here, middle of the Pacific Ocean, two cruise ships managed to collide due to '_an __odd __radar __malfunction __that__ affect __both __ships __simultaneously_'... thousands died. And this one... some ass is killing off people in Chicago, trying to get the devil out of their bodies with whatever dumbass ritual he made up. I bet you he's not even getting the possessed ones right. Oh, and this one's the best: a flock of ca—"

"What was that about the guy in Chicago?" Sam cut in, not waiting for Bobby's answer as he ripped the paper out of his hands.

Bobby was about to give him grief for his poor manners, but one look at Sam's face as he read the rest of the article and the hunter knew Sam was on to something. "What is it, boy?"

"They're calling this guy '_The__ Exorcist_'," Sam said, his face growing grim as he read on. "_'__Police __have __finally __released __some __details __about __his __victims, __hoping __to __put __a __quicker __end __to __The__ Exorcist__'__s __seventeen __deaths __toll, __so __far.__ The __gruesome __report __lists __a__ number __of __never __before__ known __facts, __like __the__ victims__' __missing __eyes__ and __broken __necks, __heads __twisted __180 __degrees __and __the __form __in __which __their __bodies __are __displayed __on __abandoned __buildings __around __the __Chicago __area, __lifting __some __of __the __veil __surrounding __a __killer __that __has __spread __terror __in __the __hearts __of __Chicago__'__s __citizens __for __close __to__ two __months. __So __far, __no __pattern __has __been __found __as __to __his __choice __of __victims, __lending __weight __to __the __notes __left __in __every __crime__ scene, __in __which __the __killer __claims__ to __be __doing __God__'__s __work__'__. _Bobby..." he whispered, face robbed of all color.

"Dammit! You don't think that..."

"We know that Zachariah got every religious nutbag on the lookout for Dean," Sam said, his mouth reluctant to say the words his brain had already formed. "And we assumed that Dean would seek one of them out to get in touch with Michael—"

"You are thinking that perhaps the opposite happened," Castiel chipped in, concern for Dean's disappearance finding its way to his face for the first time. "You think this man, this killer, has Dean in his possession?"

Sam nodded, biting his lip. "We can't afford not to check."

Tbc...


	2. Chapter 2

THE EXORCIST

Something slithered over Dean's hip, across his stomach, and over his right arm. Almost ticklish at first, it became heavy, abrasive where it made contact with his skin and he shivered at the unpleasant touch. Alarms going off in his head like church's bells, Dean woke with a start and focused sluggish eyes on the _thing_ moving over his body.

Scales.

That was all that registered over his building panic. Black scales that glinted as light bounced off the slick surface, gleaming as they shifted, sinuously sliding across the marble floor.

Dean yelped, jerking back before he remembered his limited range of mobility; the too short chain cut deeper into his wrists and curbed his escape to mere inches. "Fuck!" he shouted, caught between the pain and alarm. "What the hell is that thing?"

"'_The__ seventy-two__ returned__ rejoicing, __and __said,__ "__Lord,__even__ the __demons__ are __subject __to __us __because __of __your __name.__"_

Which... told him nothing other than how colossally screwed in the head the man in diapers was.

Dean didn't have anything against snakes, not specifically anyway. But there was something about an eight foot long black snake, probably poisonous, roaming free around his body that made Dean's stomach churn and his skin crawl.

"_I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.' " _

Dean listened with half a mind to what the nut bag was saying. Serpents and scorpions.

God... he hoped there weren't any scorpions around. Those things were like spiders on steroids, with frigging swords strapped to their backs. And Dean really, really hated buff spiders with swords.

His eyes were focused on the snake's movement, lost on what he could do if the slithering animal decided to use him as a climbing toy again.

The second snake caught Dean completely unaware. It moved at him from the side and just as he caught sight of it from the corner of his eye, Dean moved too fast, raising his arms in defense.

The snake took it as an attack. It coiled back, engorged neck making it look like it had swallowed a tennis ball. Its tail, dragging through the floor, swished back and forth, like an over-energetic puppy.

It struck forward faster than Dean could move out of the way. Fangs pierced through his left forearm, in and out before the pain even registered.

It was like being stabbed by a dagger with fire for a blade.

There was nothing Dean could use as a shield, nowhere he could run. Each movement he made in an attempt to stop the snake, the animal took it as offensive rather than defensive and responded by charging faster.

Dean whimpered, curling on himself. He was too weak and tired to match the snake's speed. Even if he hadn't been starved for God knew how many days, and his body wasn't as black and blue as it currently was, Dean knew he would've never been a match for the snake's speed.

The other one, the happy-tree-climber, came back, attracted by the sounds its angrier cohort was making. The pissed off one was rearing to attack again, Dean could hear it hissing. When its fangs sunk into Dean's skin one more time, its pal decided to join the fun. All Dean could do was cover his face and hope the snakes were poisonous enough to kill him fast.

Through his continued – and utterly failed - attempts to dodge and duck out of the path of his fanged attackers, Dean was aware of only two things outside his bubble of pain. First, anorexic sumo wrestler guy hadn't once stopped his droning, repetitive chant, and second, while the man was _fucking __just __standing __there_, the snakes had made no move to attack the older man. Not even once.

* * *

><p>"I hate to be the one pointing this out," Bobby started, waiting for Sam's attention to drift away from the road and to him. "But how do you suppose we find a killer that the Chicago PD has been after for over two months and failed to find?"<p>

Sam's hands curled around the steering wheel of an old Pontiac that Bobby had driven down from his salvage yard. "You heard Cass," he started. The angel, torn apart from Heaven and too weak to be able to transport both hunters and all of their weapons all the way to Chicago, had gone off to keep an eye on Lucifer while they drove there. "He needs only a name to find this killer wherever he's hiding."

"Oh... it's just a matter of finding his name," Bobby said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "And how do you suppose we find that? Ask nicely?"

Sam nodded, missing the snark on the older man's voice. "We're not the police, Bobby... we have ways of finding these things that they would never think to use. We need to find this guy before he kills Dean."

"I get that, Sam, I really do but how do you—" All snark left Bobby's face. "You want to do a séance," he simply said, knowing exactly what was on Sam's mind. "You wanna pluck one of his victims from its eternal rest to give you the name of the killer?"

Sam looked ahead, aware of the veiled accusation in Bobby's words. "This monster killed them... tortured them before murdering them," Sam said, his voice breaking as he tried his best to not picture his brother in the same situation. "I'm sure one of them will be more than happy to help us."

"Fine... let's say I don't think that's completely messed up and the very opposite of what we're supposed to do," Bobby pointed out gruffly. "First, though, we try it the old fashion way."

* * *

><p>Despite his exhaustion, Dean couldn't sleep. After the snakes had grown tired, or had plainly realized that he wasn't attacking them back, they'd lost interest and had slithered their way out.<p>

A few minutes after that, Dean had heard diaper-man walk around for a bit before the sound of a plastic bowl touching the marble floor reached his ears. Water, it seemed, was Dean's reward for entertaining the bastard with his screams and blood.

Then he was alone again. Alone to wonder and wait for the numbness to hit, for his airways to slam shut, for whatever crap the snake's poison does to people who are bitten. Other than the pain from the bites themselves, however, nothing else was happening.

He forced himself to inspect the damage. His arms, without the protection of clothes, had taken the brunt of the attack. Some of the puncture wounds were already growing red and swollen; others had been torn, skin ripped right off where the snakes fangs had gotten stuck.

Dean looked lethargically at the bowl of water. It was only inches away but it felt like an impossible distance to cover. His tongue felt twice its size and Dean could swear that his teeth had a coat of fur over them. He needed that water.

Inch by inch, he moved forward, until he was close enough to lift the bowl to his cracked lips. The metallic tang of the liquid spoke of old pipes; or maybe there was something else mixed in the water. There was no point in trying to guess. Either way, it wasn't like Dean could afford to waste whatever precious gulps of water he was given on thoughts of tainted water.

His thoughts, however, turned into another direction. The most frustrating of directions. The _why?_ direction.

Why was this guy doing this to him? Why him? Didn't Dean have enough crap on his plate already that he needed this too?

Like the water, there really wasn't much to be gained in finding answers to those questions. If the guy wanted something from Dean, he was taking his sweet time demanding it, not to mention the whole show he put up every time he visited; if he was doing all of this just for kicks, then his reasons escaped reason itself and Dean was no shrink to be mind-scoping the guy.

Detachedly, Dean remembered some of the words the weird man had been reciting as the snakes bit into him; thinking about it, Dean was sure he'd done the same thing earlier, when he'd used that rod to tattoo Dean a new skin color.

For someone who had never paid much attention to such book, in the last two years Dean had seen himself forced to read the Bible from cover to cover. Several times.

First, it had been Lilith and the damn seals to break Lucifer free, and then it had been Lucifer himself, with his by-the-book apocalypse. For one who had never paid much attention to Pastor Jim's sermons, Dean figured that, between he, Sam and Bobby, they already knew the thing by heart from creation to the end of times.

Mr. Fucked-up brains had been reading passages from the Bible, Dean was pretty sure of that. Something about conquering demons?

Something metallic echoed against the cement floor, disrupting his thoughts. Startled, Dean turned.

Too fast.

The room spun around him and the floor rushed to meet his face. Dean struggled to zero in on the sound that had caught his attention as gravity twisted and turned_._

The cold of marble pressing against his cheek, Dean blinked his eyes, trying to chase away the black spots in his vision. Moving slower this time around, he managed to turn just enough to find the source of the noise.

Dean was tired of that psycho sneaking up on him and there was no telling what other surprises he might have in stored for him. The room, however, was still as empty as before. Nothing there but Dean and the birds that seemed to permanently live in that place.

The can that had rolled away had once been filled with beans. It was too far away for Dean to read the brand, but the shape and color was unmistakable. He knew it was impossible because the can had probably been there for years, but Dean could swear he was still able to smell the baked beans inside, hot and bubbling in their bland sauce, delicious.

Mouth watering, Dean's stomach rumbled anew; the empty twist in his gut was almost too painful to bear and he moaned with hunger The bastard knew that without water, Dean would die too fast for him to have his fun. Food, on the other hand, was a whole different matter.

The can moved again, and this time Dean knew it hadn't been his delirious imagination. There was something pushing it around.

So far, Dean hadn't seen any rats around. He figured the crows took care of those. Cockroaches, on the other hand...

When the can moved into the poor light coming through the window, Dean realized that, although also black, it was no cockroach moving the empty can around. No rat either, although Dean almost wished it'd been one.

Crazy guy was gone, but he'd left his pets behind. Or at least one of them.

The snake soon lost its interest in the can. If it was looking for food, Dean figured it was having as much luck as he was.

He didn't dare moving as the huge black snake slid across the ground, graceful and powerful, making its way near the altar. Maybe it was the smell of blood on Dean's wounds, maybe it was the coldness of the marble; Dean had no way of knowing.

He just knew that he wasn't getting bit again.

Summoning all the strength he had and borrowing some out of thin air, Dean leaped forward as soon as the snake was in his reach. Using the only weapon he had at hand, Dean grabbed the snake by its thick neck and coiled the chain around it before pulling as hard as he could.

The image of princess Leia in that tiny bikini, squeezing the snot out of Jabba, the Hut came to Dean's mind unbidden and he laughed out loud, thinking that, at least, his boxers covered more than her outfit.

The crack and snap sound of the animal's neck breaking put an end to Dean's unhinged laughter. He dropped the snake's suddenly flaccid body and stared numbly at its unmoving corpse; the thing had only done what came naturally but he couldn't help the irrational surge of joy at having ended its life.

He thought of shoving it away; get that animal as far away from his sight as he could. Instead, Dean found himself reaching for it again, bloody fingernails picking at the soft scales of the snake, pulling, tearing, edging his way through until he found soft meat underneath.

Four days without food. That was all that crossed Dean's mind as he raised the dead snake to his mouth and took a bite.

* * *

><p>They drove to Chicago in record time. After all, enough time had already been wasted in Minneapolis.<p>

Taking turns driving to avoid any unnecessary stops, not once did Sam or Bobby dared touch the subject of the possibility of them being on a wild goose chase. Even thought the thought was never far from their minds, never once either of them voiced their fears of Dean being already dead or worse, already in Michael's hands.

For this, at least, they had to go on faith.

Castiel looked bored when they met with him. "This means of transportation is not suitable for the urgency of our mission."

Sam couldn't agree more, even if he didn't give the angel anything more than a nod. "Find anything?"

Castiel's looked up, his eyes reflecting the color of the cloudy sky as if they were the same. "There are many souls in this city. I visited a few of the more... devout men and women, but none were in possession of any information that might aid us."

"Well, it was worth a shot," Bobby said, opening his duffel bag to take out a wrinkled dark, blue suit and measuring it up to Castiel's body. "Time to pay the cops a visit."

* * *

><p>The snake had tasted as vile going down as it had coming back up. And all the traffic up and down had done nothing but make Dean's throat feel like scrapped paper and his mouth taste of blood. A complete loss, all in all.<p>

Dean had no quells about drinking all the water that Mr. Loose Screws had left behind this time around. In hindsight, a few drops would've helped to wash away the taste of vomit and blood he was now stuck with.

The snake's carcass stared at Dean with dead eyes, twitching in its spot as the crows finished the meal he couldn't keep down.

Miserable, hungry, cold and hurting, Dean curled up on the dirty marble floor, hoping that sleep came fast enough to take him away from the aches and pains.

He needed to get out of that place. It irked Dean to no end that he could Houdini his way out of almost any situation and yet, there he was, stuck to the ground, held 'only' by a length of chain and a pair of cuffs.

There were no pieces of wire lying loose in the vicinity of his reduced reach; there were no nails on the floorboard that he could pry loose. And yet, all Dean had to do was look around the empty church and he could spot at least five different things he could use to open those cuffs.

It was like dying of thirst in the middle of a pool of fresh water.

Dean had tried breaking off a piece of the plastic water bowl, something small enough that he could fit into the chains' lock and work the damn thing open. The plastic however, refused to cooperate, seemingly more inclined to rip open the skin off his fingers rather than help him escape.

In pure desperation, Dean had even tried one of the snake's fangs. Though sharp as small knives before, when they had pierced him mercilessly, now that there was no life behind them, the fangs were nothing but soft, rotting pieces of worthlessness.

It was no use. Dean was stuck there until there was some divine intervention to get him out or crazy guy made the mistake of getting too close.

As he tried to find a comfortable position in his spot on the floor, his eyes found the stained glass windows.

He knew every each and every one of them by heart now, having spent hours and hours stuck in that place with nothing more to do but stare at his surroundings and think.

There were small imperfections in the etched glass; little things that might go amiss in a glancing look, but stood out when studied close. A nose too big over here, a sheep whose muzzle looked more like a dog's there, a foot bent at such an angle that it seemed impossible to not be broken, a river that ended abruptly into a tree. Beautiful at first sight and yet so flawed.

It was like every window presented the defected results of some artist, trying his hand at drawing for the first time, faulty work that no one would see fit to expose anywhere. Except in that abandoned church.

After four days stuck in there, Dean was beginning to wonder if those windows weren't trying to tell him something.

When sleep did claim him, Dean found little rest; the figures in the windows were… unsettling, and they haunted his dreams despite his best efforts. Michael was there too, still wearing his father's face, only it wasn't young John as before, it was his father as Dean remembered him. Older, bigger, grimmer and looking disapprovingly at him.

Michael shrinking from view as Dean watched, like he was standing on quick sand. He sunk lower and lower, without moving a muscle to free himself.

Dean struggled to reach him, to help that being wearing his father's face but he couldn't move his feet. Looking down in bafflement, Dean could see nothing but stone where his boots should've been. Marble feet, like a statue.

Dean fought the unforgiving pull of the hard stone, pushing his body to the point of almost breaking his legs, but there was no give.

And still Michael sunk, slowly disappearing from view until there was nothing left of him.

"NO!" Dean jerked up with a start, the loss and utter despair that laced his nightmare still lingering as his eyes adapted to the gloomy light. He looked down, half expecting to find marble feet, but his feet were still made of flesh. White washed from the cold and with about as much feeling as the marble stone, but still flesh.

Michael was gone, but the mad man was back. "I see you have no problems eating your own kind," he said. It was the most words he'd actually spoken to Dean that hadn't come from the book.

Dean glared at him. The man still wore nothing but a linen cloth around his groin and Dean found himself wondering if it was always the same or if he changed it once in awhile, like a pair of skivvies. The poor light coming off the windows reflected off his shaved head, giving him a fake halo. Dean had no idea if it was still the middle of the night or the middle of a really depressing day.

In one of the man's hands there was the same worn black book that he always carried around and in the other something metallic that made a faint noise each time he moved. Dean was starting to dread that black book.

"Came to read me another story?" Dean offered back. He needed to find out what made Man-in-Diapers tic, get him to make some mistake, find his way to freedom. Dean struggled to his knees, not wanting to face what was coming next lying on the floor like some victim. "I have a soft spot for the ones where the bad guy ends up dead and the hero gets the girl," he offered with a smirk designed to piss off various captors.

This one in particular, though, didn't seem affected by Dean's words in the very least.

"Do not worry... the 'bad guy' will be vanquished because evil cannot be allowed to linger... and as for _women_," he said the word as if he was tasting something vile and particularly unsavory, "they are the instrument of the devil, pretty decoys to lead righteous men in the paths of sin and perdition... this hero has no need for such fleshy rewards."

Dean had to blink. Sure, in his mind, he had come up with all kinds of variations of 'loony' for the guy holding him prisoner. But hearing him speak now, like some deranged monk straight from the thirteenth-century... Dean was sure the man was the real deal, unhinged-wise. Something was very, very broken in that man's head.

"Okay," Dean started slowly, completely at loss as how to deal with a truly sick mind. "No women for you, I totally get that... but what do you say we lose the whole bondage show and I get out of your hair? So to speak."

The man's chatty mood, however, seemed to have passed. As he came closer, Dean managed to get a better look at what he was holding. A cold chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature raced down Dean's spine as he realized what it was.

It was a chain with teeth. It was the only way to put it. Like barbed wire, only thicker and stronger, with leather straps on each end of the metal contraption.

A few years back, when Sam was in Stanford, Dean and his father had worked a job in New York. A string of deaths connected to a building belonging to the Opus Dei organization, deaths under circumstances that had left the police confused and the Catholic Church less than inclined to allow strangers in to the place.

After realizing that the deaths were due to some cursed object as John had initially thought, but were being committed by a former member, deranged and obsessed with the old ways and who had killed himself in that same building, John had gone to find the bones and burn them while Dean stayed behind to make sure that the ghost didn't get a chance to kill anyone else.

The ghost, more invested in killing all members with too modern views than he was in protecting his own remains, had come after Dean rather than John. Before he vanished in a burst of smoke and flames, Dean had gotten a good look at him. Close enough to get his teeth on edge.

Butt naked, with his body covered in angry welts and bloodshot, crazy eyes, the ghost had a weird contraption strapped to his upper thigh, thin droplets of blood dripping from it even though he'd been long dead. A cilice, Dean had found out later, a corporal punishment instrument that had been the core of many discussions the ghost had had with other members when he was still alive.

A contraption just like the one crazy-man was holding in his hand right now.

Dean fought the insane urge to cover his thighs and stop the man from strapping that on him. He, however, had other intentions for the cilice.

The first strike hit Dean right across his shoulder blades, ripping shirt and skin in the same blow.

"FUCK!" Dean let out, tears springing unbidden to his eyes. It felt just like the snakebite, if the snake had a mouth full of teeth instead of just two.

"I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every specter from hell, and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," the mad man started reading from his book, pausing only to land another punishing blow.

With little to no room to escape, all Dean could do was curl on himself and use his arms once again to protect his head as the whipping kept on coming. After a while, he could no longer tell what was bruised, what was ripped or what was bleeding. His whole body was a single entity of fire and pain.

"Be gone and stay far from this creature of God. For it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell."

Distantly, Dean realized that he was being exorcized. And even though the last thing Dean wanted was to obey the words coming out of that man's mouth, into the depths of hell was exactly were Dean found himself falling.

* * *

><p>"I don't get it," the commander chief of the 3rd district police department said, his well-trimmed mustache twitching disapprovingly under his nose. "The first pair of FBI guys that came by already took copies of all the files... and you guys want new copies? What is it, your buddies can't share?"<p>

Sam sat straighter in his uncomfortable chair, sweat sliding the side of his face. If Castiel choose that specific moment to open his mouth, they would be screwed. In fact, if it weren't for the angel's insistence in 'landing a hand', Sam would've preferred to go by himself.

Truthfully, had things gone the way Sam wanted, neither of them would've come. A simply search on local newspapers would give them the names of the all the victims so far. On of them _had_ to be in a chatty mood.

Bobby, however, would not be moved from his belief that, if they were going to do this, they would be doing it with all the information that they could get their hands on. And because this Exorcist killer had spread his victims all over the city, that meant talking to several commanders, one for each district in Chicago.

Big cities sucked like that.

The first thing that Commander Davies had done, as soon as Sam introduced himself as special agent Gecko and Castiel as special agent Fuller, was call their 'supervisor' for a credentials check. Bobby, stuck in the motel room as a precaution for such events, had been convincing enough to get them inside the commander's office, but not enough to completely kill off his suspicions.

"The documents were incomplete... we need to compare what you've got now to what you sent then," Sam offered straight-faced. Seeing the raised eyebrow on the other man's forehead at the implied sloppiness of his files, Sam added a soothing, "The Bureau really appreciates your cooperation in this matter, Commander Davies... it is in all of our best interests to put this murder behind bars as soon as possible."

The tall, African American policeman leaned back on his chair, eyeing the pair of them. If he was pondering whether to throw them out for excessive bullshitting or grab all the help he could get in catching a serial killer that was spreading fear and death in his city, the second choice seemed to win. "Just get this crazy man off of my streets," he finally said, picking up the phone to call his assistant.

* * *

><p>Michael was still fading from view, taken by howling winds this time around, when Dean gasped awake.<p>

He had no idea how long he'd been out. The feeble light of before was gone, replaced by the silver shades of moonlight... which told him nothing about how much time had passed.

It was getting hard to keep track of the days. It seemed like he'd left Blue Earth a month ago and yet, Dean knew that couldn't be right.

He knew how long a person could go without water or food and he knew his own limits. Dean knew that he was dangerously nearing his. He could survive for weeks more, yes, but he would soon become too weak to escape.

And that was the only thought in Dean's mind. He had to escape, or this lunatic was going to kill him, he was sure of that much.

Any other time, Dean knew he could have counted on Sam to find him and come to his rescue; this time though, Sam wouldn't even know Dean was a I need of help. As far as his brother knew, Dean had just run off on him, leaving no clue where he'd gone off to; there was nothing Sam could do about it then, or now. And Dean couldn't blame anyone else but himself for that.

Cass could help Sam, _would__help_, Dean was sure of that as well, but the marks on Dean's ribs prevented the angel from locating him. Dean guessed that, if push came to shove, he could always try and break his rib cage and call Castiel...

Dean snorted, the sad, maniacal sound of someone slowly slipping away from sanity. It was hard to keep a grip on reality when his waking hours were made of crow-callings and waiting for more pain and his sleep filled with nightmare variations of Michael slipping through his fingers. That grim future, the one where everything was lost, was becoming more and more real each time Dean closed his eyes.

Dean shifted on the floor, feeling every bleeding cut and bruise as an anchor to reality. His shirt was in shreds, barely hanging from his shoulders and even his boxers had large rips in them. Modesty, however, was far from being his main concern at the moment.

Dean needed to get out of there.

As far as he could tell, Dean was pretty sure that, whoever that man was and whatever was wrong with his head, he was trying to exorcise some demon out of Dean.

Which... would be kind of hilarious, if it weren't so fucked up. Dean Winchester, Michael's Sword, was being ridden of his demons by a guy in diapers, who had absolutely no idea about what he was doing.

Mustering his wits about him, Dean slowly got to his knees, as vertical as the length of chain allowed him. He needed to keep mobile, he needed to keep as much of his strength as he could. When chance presented itself, Dean could not be too weak to seize it.

With a deep sigh reserved for tasks that he wished he could avoid, Dean inspected the damage the cilice had left behind. A couple of the lacerations that he could see were still bleeding. There was nothing to be done about the dirt that covered every inch of his skin, seeping into the cuts, but he could at least bind some of the deeper ones and stop the blood from seeping out. He needed the stuff on the inside, not decorating the pale marble.

His shirt was already ruined anyway. It didn't take much effort to rip several stripes of cloth from it to wrap around the worse of the wounds.

Working around the chains was a harder task. If one hand managed to reach a particular cut, the other lacked the length of chain to follow, leaving him to wrap bandages one handed.

He gave up on most of them. Anywhere past his knees, Dean simply couldn't reach.

Exhausted by the effort, Dean watched detachedly as his arms fell limply across his lap, too heavy and shaky to do anything more. It was like the limbs weren't even attached to his body anymore.

He felt light headed, skin stretched too thin over his bones. To some extent, Dean had felt like that ever since he'd returned from Hell. Now, it was like his body was catching up with his spirit.

* * *

><p>Bobby's eyebrows rose to his hairline as Castiel popped into the middle of the room, five carton boxes filled to the brim surrounding him. A couple of minutes later, two kicks at the door told him that Sam was carrying the rest in his arms.<p>

"That's a whole lot of information," he whistled, looking at the seven boxes. "If the cops hadn't gotten their hands on this guy, it sure ain't for lack of trying."

"Apparently, the man moves like a ghost," Sam said, having skimmed a few reports as he waited for the rest. "No finger prints, no shoe prints, not even a scattered hair. Actually, if he turns out to be a ghost, our job will be a hell of lot easier," he added with a feral smile. The flames of torched remains were already glinting in his eyes. "Otherwise, we're just wasting our time here," he added with a pointed look at Bobby.

The older hunter responded with a raised eyebrow and the answer was clear enough to the younger man.

It wasn't like Bobby didn't felt the same urgency that was driving Sam. Lord knew his heart was twisted in a knot of concern for the oldest Winchester, thinking about what that poor kid could be going through while they read file after file.

But the kick in the teeth was that none of them were psychic. Well, not like that anyway, in Sam's case. For them to do a séance with no idea whether that particular spirit was at rest or not, was risking disturbing the eternal peace of someone who'd already suffered enough while living. It was not the kind of crap Bobby wanted on his conscience and he knew for a fact that it was the kind of thing Dean would chew them a new one if he knew they were even considering it.

So, no, Bobby wasn't ready to give up and go call the beyond in search of a soul to tell them all the answers. And judging by Sam's frustrated look, the kid got the message loud and clear.

"Well, divvy up and start reading," Bobby called out before Sam could voice any arguments. Leading by example, the old hunter picked up a thick file from the top of the stack and got down to business.

* * *

><p>Dean lay back, for once welcoming the coldness of the stone floor. The second his shoulder blades hit the surface, however, the temporary bliss was gone, replaced by a lancing pain that felt like he was being stabbed.<p>

Dean jerked up and gasped, closing his eyes against the wave of dizziness. "Goddamit all to hell!"

He wasn't sure whom he was complaining to, but one of crows perched on the high beams gave him a sideways glance that looked condescending even from afar. In an odd way, it reminded him of Castiel and his confused looks at human's idiosyncrasies. "Screw you!"

Getting back to his knees, Dean got as close as he could to the ring on the floor, hoping to give enough leeway to his right hand to reach his upper back. There was something stuck there, he was sure; he'd felt it bury deeper when he'd leaned back.

His back was slick with sweat and blood, fingers slipping on his skin as Dean tried to reach the crux of the aching point. It was hard to pinpoint an exact location when everything was sore and raw, but as his nail scrapped over metal, the pain was so sharp and vivid that Dean almost pulled his hand away, startled.

Taking a deep breath, he patted the area around until he could grip the metal piece in between the tips of two fingers.

Easier said than done, however. The piece of metal kept on slipping from his grip, like an evasive eel, slipping through his fingers. But once Dean had ascertained where the thing was, it was easier to go back and have another go at pulling it out.

If it weren't for the pathetic amount of water he'd drank for the past days, Dean was sure he'd be drenched in sweat by the time he felt the damn metal slide free of his muscle. As it was, he was just left with the heat and deep exhaustion that made him feel like some baked bread.

Unless he was growing fish bones made out of metal, Dean was pretty sure it was a piece of the fucking cilice that diaper-man had used to whip him. The damn thing must've broken off on his skin.

Looking at the small length of wire covered in his own blood, Dean smiled. It was both small and hard enough for him to use on the lock of his cuffs.

* * *

><p>Sam closed the report and leaned back, staring at the white ceiling for a bit. The images he'd been looking at, however, were branded into his brain.<p>

It wasn't like he was squeamish; no hunter could afford that and the Winchesters, raised in the job, were less squeamish than most. After all they had seen, Sam fear they'd become downright desensitized.

Gutted bellies with bowels turned into confetti, locusts flocking out of someone's mouth, half eaten person-buffet... no sweat. Those were the traits of the trade and, through the years, Sam had grown even accustomed to them.

Victim number four was a man in his late twenties, a bartender from a local dive in District five. The picture of a smiling young man, with short-cropped sandy hair, brown eyes and round nose, with his arm affectionately across the shoulders of dark skinned man of Hispanic origins, had little to do with the violent imagery that his mangled corpse's crime scene photos offered.

His body was covered in bruises and what looked like scratch marks; two black pits had replaced the brown eyes and his chest had been cracked open, heart exposed to the elements.

The eyes had been surgically removed and the carefully cauterized, while the victim was still alive, according to the report. Also, fresh water had been found in his lungs, even though none could be found anywhere in the vicinity where the body had been discovered. According to the coroner's report, cause of death had been shock, probably due, the medic had ventured, to either the prolonged torture or the fact that the victim was still alive when his chest was cut open.

The prolonged torture part made bile rise to Sam's mouth.

It was impossible not to replace that man's face with Dean's. Harder even not to despair, imagining what could be happening to his brother in that very instant. Forty years in Hell, and now that he was barely back to the land of the living, Dean was suffering the same thing again.

Was it really a comfort to imagine that a human killer would never be able to reach the levels of cruelty of demons like Alastair?

"Everything okay, Sam?" Bobby's voice cut through the down spiral of pessimism that Sam was falling through. "You look a little grey around the edges."

Sam took a deep breath; he pushed away the image of Dean's ribs cracked open like some messed up piñata and opened the next file on the pile. "I'm fine," he said dryly, even though he spared a feeble smile in the older man's direction. There was no point in pretending that his answer was as sincere as vegetarian lion. "Found anything yet?"

Bobby looked as haggard and tired as Sam felt. They'd been at it for hours now, trying to compress in one day all the information that the police had at their disposal for months. Predictably, they weren't having much more luck than the men in blue. "Nothing that will tell us where this killer is holed up, or whether he has Dean."

"He has Dean," Sam whispered, his tone so certain and final that he wondered from where that certainty came.

Ever since he'd opened that first file and seen the handwritten letter that the killer had left with his first victim, claiming to be doing the will of God and fighting demons, Sam knew that this man had Dean in his possession. "You think he's a hunter? Someone in the business?"

Bobby shook his head, a sour expression in his face. "This guy doesn't know jack squat," he said. "Whatever the hell he's doing, he ain't taking demons out of no one. These people were all drugged with some kind of hallucinogenic, they had snakes bites all over their bodies, water in their lungs... does that sound like any exorcism you've ever heard of?"

Sam had to agree with Bobby there. There were plenty of people in the world claiming that they could expel demons from people's bodies, but most of them didn't have a clue about what they were doing. Most relied on medieval ideas of trances and beatings that had more to do with the show that was put on than actual demons. Most of them had never even seen a demon in their lives.

Like this Exorcist guy.

Sam rubbed his eyes with his thumbs, watching detachedly as white stars popped in and out of his vision when he opened them again.

He had started the week afraid that Dean would end up in Michael's hands and now he was sure that his brother was at the mercy of a serial killer with religious delusions. How was that for an ironic kick in the jewels?

"Found any connection between the victims?" Sam asked, hopefully. Like any other prowling animal, this guy had to have his hunting grounds, a place where he picked his victims from the crowd and grabbed them. And the dead victims were the only ones who could help them with that.

"Diddly," Bobby let out, frustration in every syllabus. "As far as I can tell, he's just your regular wacko with religious misconceptions, going after homosexuals, hookers, addicts and unmarried mothers," he said with an acid tone that spoke clearly what the older hunter thought of such creeps. "I guess the asshole is trying to cast _their_ demons outs," he added with an eye-roll that he reserved particular for such brand of ignorance.

"There's one that doesn't fit," Sam pointed out, searching through the various files until he got the one he was looking for. "Dolores Groton. Housewife, mother of two girls, happily married until she was diagnosed with a late onset of schizophrenia with religious delusions that made her believe she was possessed by demons."

"And she wasn't?" Bobby had to ask, rising from his seat and going over to Sam's side, peeking over his shoulder at the same file. "I mean... it's not like they would know the difference."

"Right," Sam agreed. "But then again, no demon would allow itself to be taken by this guy and slowly tortured," he pointed out.

Dolores, like all the others, had been found without her eyes, chest ripped open and displayed over a rusty car in an abandoned parking lot.

"This guy is grabbing people he sees as sinners and freeing their souls from demons," Sam went on, his eyes getting that glazed over look that said how far deep inside his own head he was at the moment. "And even though none of these people were possessed, Dolores believed that she was... maybe believed it strongly enough to search someone to rid her of her demons... someone like this guy."

Bobby scratched his beard. "What are you saying exactly? That this guy has a shop open somewhere? People just go there and order a demon-free soul?"

Sam looked outside. Chicago had millions of people living there. Millions who needed to believe in something. If they met with just one doomsday preacher who had actually been visited by a bona fide angel, how many of them would believe every word out of his mouth? How many would see that man as a true prophet?

"Bobby, do you know what is the worst thing that can happen to a hypochondriac?" Sam asked, his gaze never leaving the window. When the older man gave him no answer, Sam looked back, his grim face mirroring Bobby's. "Catch a real disease."

TBC

Once more, many thanks to Jackfan2 for her wonderful help. All remaining buu-buus are mine


	3. Chapter 3

The sound of the cuffs' locking mechanism sliding out of its rightful place was faint and barely perceptible. To Dean's ears, it was the sweetest symphony ever composed.

He rubbed his raw wrists, hissing at the burn even as he savored the absent feeling of metal constricting his circulation and turning his fingers into numb sausages. He stretched his arms for the first time in what felt like months, joints popping after the lack of use. Dean looked around even as he worked the kinks out of his stiff body, searching for something that could be used as a weapon. Chances were that Crazy-no-pants was close by and Dean had no intention of letting the man get the drop on him a second time.

The small length of chain that he'd just gotten rid of seemed like the only thing solid enough to do some damage. Reluctantly, Dean took that with him.

The heavy beam of wood jammed across the front door eliminated that as an escape route. Dean squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember if Mr. Sickfuck had ever used that door or if there was another way in and out of that place. As far as he could see, the front door was it.

Looking around, Dean searched for a crack on the walls, for some hidden door. The altar, although bare of any artifacts and decorations, was closer to him than the wall behind it. There had to be some sort of room behind it, hopefully one with a connection to the outside. After all, that was the direction Mr. Lunatic always seemed to arrive and retreated to after his... visits.

The second Dean got to his feet, the room tilted around him; gravity sent him back to his knees, chain clattering to the ground as he tried to use both hands to catch himself and failed. The sound of fluttering wings filled the empty church as the crows scattered away, scared by the noise.

"Smooth, Dean..." he coughed, throat dry and tight. "Real smooth."

If Crazy-man were anywhere near, he would've surely heard all the clatter. Dean looked around, tense and ready for a fight, waiting to see if anyone would come. The place, however, remained empty.

Dean tried to get up a second time. His legs shook, limbs unused for more than four days... or had it been five? He could no longer tell, but it had been long enough to make walking seem like a hard task.

He staggered ahead, bare feet dragging across the dirty floor. They felt heavy, like two anchors that decided every five seconds that _that_ was a good place to park his ass. Dean had to work at winning each argument with his frigging limbs and somehow manage to keep using them. It wasn't exactly graceful, but at least he was on the move.

Just as he'd hoped, there was a door on the right side of the altar; it was made of heavy wood and the hinges had several layers of rust, but so long as it meant freedom, Dean had no complaints. He pulled it open, angry at the realization that there was barely enough strength in his arms to get that simple task done.

The door dragged across the floor, clearing a path of dust and dry leaves. The room beyond was dark. There were no stained glass windows in there; there were no windows at all.

Dean left the door open, taking advantage of the pale moonlight that streamed in through the windows from the main room of the church. He leaned against the door frame, giving into the oppressive exhaustion and allowing himself a moment's rest as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Maybe, just maybe, the crazy bastard had stored his clothes somewhere in that place. Dean missed his jeans...

Taking in the room, his eyes held at one point and he straightened. "The hell…?"

At first glance, the walls had seemed painted black, paint flaking away from old age. While the color choice had seemed faintly odd to him, Dean hadn't given it that much thought. Now, however, he could see it was a paint job at all.

Writing.

Covering every single wall, from top to bottom.

'_Black world, filled with pus and contempt; black souls conspiring, infecting, leaking their vile fluids and eating all, eating the whole world. Black world, black dreams, I wake to see the light and burn the infected away. I am the light...'_

'_And the angel appeared onto me and I saw the light. We shine with the same brightness; he is the fire, I am the match. Fester, disease ridden souls, we descend upon you as clean fire to save all...'_

'_And the light cast away the shadows and I could see; and the light cast away the poison and I could eat; and the light cast away the putrid smell and I could breath...'_

The letters were so tiny and meticulously inscribed that Dean had to almost touch his nose to the wall to make sure he was seeing right.

Miles and miles of text, like an army of microscopic ants crawling over the aged plaster. Deranged ramblings of a seriously one-track mind.

Dean shivered, backing away from the walls without even realizing what he was doing. Like the writings could somehow jump off the plaster and attack him.

He did not wanted to dwell on the sort of mind that could dedicate so much time and effort into pouring his thoughts, his _message_, or whatever the hell that was. It must have taken diaper-man months, even years, to do all of that. It was a little too much _Se7en_ for Dean's liking.

In one of the corners, there were two small cages. The surviving snake was curled in on itself, a mount of black menace, ignoring Dean even as its tongue forked in and out, sensing his presence. Cage number two was empty and Dean had to smile at the small victory.

Crazy-no-pants wasn't there, that much was plain to see, but his presence seemed to permeate every molecule of air in that place. The writing on the wall seemed to close in on Dean, like it was the madman's skin and the hunter was trapped in there, surrounded by the madman's essence.

The place smelled heavily of incense, iron and wax. Evidence of the latter was plain to see; dozens of candlesticks were scattered all about the room. Literally every flat surface, littered with them; some were new, some already way past melted, their now cooled waxy coating either hanging precariously toward the floor, or in large pools.

The room was sparsely furnished. An old desk occupied one wall and on it were stacks of papers and books scattered haphazardly about the surface. The two large jars with pickled onions sat atop the desk seemed displaced in there; too average, too every day life to be in a place like that.

Maybe crazy man had a thing for pickled goods; liked to nibble while he wrote his deranged texts. Dean couldn't really give a fuck.

Pickles totally counted as vegetables and, what was more important for Dean's current condition, as food.

Mouthwatering, Dean curled one arm around the nearest jar and unscrewed the lid with his free hand. The smell of ether hit his nose with a slap and he turned his face away, eyes stinging. Who the hell kept his canned goods in medicinal solutions?

Too hungry to care, Dean plucked the top one out and gazed at the stringy bits attached to the vegetable. He blinked in confusion; the strings didn't look like strings at all. They looked like… ligaments. As far as he could remember, onions had no ligaments. Meat did.

Dean stilled. A sudden, cold shiver raced down his spine. He turned the 'onion' in his fingers, blanching at the odd, spongy texture. While the iris' color was all but gone, eaten away by the ether, the round sphere was still present. There was no question in Dean's mind; he was holding an eye. Human, if he was to guess by the size.

Bile rising, Dean placed the macabre item back in its place and backed away. There were two jars, filled to the brim with human eyeballs. He wanted to believe that they'd come from dead bodies, that diaper-man was a grave-robbing freak that went around collecting the eyes of the dearly departed.

Given the level of conservation of those eyes, however, the truth was hard to ignore, no matter how much Dean tried.

The eyes those had undoubtedly come from living people. People that fucking freak had killed. People that had met the same fate diaper-man probably had in store for Dean himself.

Wasting no more time in that chilling place, Dean took a second glance around.

There was only one way out, a second door opposite from the one he'd just crossed.

Praying to anyone listening that he wouldn't have to find a way to pick that lock as well, Dean grabbed the handle and closed his eyes.

* * *

><p>Mr. Groton was little more than a shadow of a man. Filthy beard that barely disguised the gauntness of his face, the man who opened the door at Sam's third ring, had clearly given up.<p>

"Mr. Groton?" Sam asked, pulling out the fake card that identified him as Dr. Stevenson, forensic psychiatrist. "Do you mind if I take a minute of your time?"

The man looked up, barely taking notice of either the card or Sam, and stared. The heavy bags under his blood shot eyes spoke of countless sleepless nights, even as his rumpled clothes told of no lack of trying.

To Sam, that man looked so lost in mourning that he could bet Mr. Groton wasn't even aware which day of the week it was.

"What do you want from me?" Groton asked briskly in a raspy voice. "I don't need no shrink, I told them—did Lizzie send you? She did, didn't she? That bitch—"

"I work for the police, Mr. Groton," Sam lied, ending the man's tirade smoothly. "I have a few questions about your wife's mental condition, prior to her murder. It's very important tha—"

The attempt to close the door in his face had been expected. Honestly, Sam would've done the same thing if he were in the widower's shoes. His foot was already lodged between the door and the doorframe even before the man pushed it completely close. "The man who killed your wife is still out there, Mr. Groton... you can help us to bring him to justice," Sam called out, appealing to the man's integrity.

"What do I care? Will that bring my Doll back?" the man shouted back as he heaved against the door, putting all of his body weight into it.

Sam's weight and built, however, were more persuasive than the smaller man. All he had to do was give it a sudden push and the door flung open. The man scrambled back, unbalanced in more ways than just physically. "Get out! This is home invasion!"

Hands raised in a non threatening way, Sam kept his distance, even though there was no way he was going away without the answers he'd come looking for. "Truth is, your wife was long gone before she was taken by the Exorcist, wasn't she, Mr. Groton?"

Green eyes that were a shade darker than Dean's filled with tears as all fight abandoned the grieving man. "What does that have to do with anything?" he asked without meeting Sam's eyes, his voice all but a defeated whisper.

"May I?" Sam ventured, pointing towards the house. This was not a conversation that either of them would want to have in a doorway.

Mr. Groton turned around, disappearing behind an opened door on the left. Sam closed the front door and followed the man inside, doing his best to avoid stumbling on the clutter of mail and trash scattered through the hall.

The living room still showed vestigial remains of a once normal, carefree life.

The mantle over the fireplace was packed with pictures of the happy couple and two identical little girls. An abandoned doll, with a pink dress and blond curls, lay on the floor near the brown leather couch. A number of vases with flowers and plants in various degrees of decay were scattered decoratively through the room.

By the window, a reclining chair with a thick book, open and forgotten over a blue wool shawl, matching blue slippers neatly lined up on the floor. Sam could almost imagine the ghost of this man's wife sitting there, reading her book late in the afternoon as the sun set. The whole set looked undisturbed, like it was just waiting for her to return and finish her read.

"Are you gonna answer my question or just stand there, staring?" Mr. Groton demanded.

His hands were shaking as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his robe.

"Are your daughters home, Mr. Groton?" Sam asked, taking a seat on the couch. A beer bottle rolled away as he tucked his feet close to the seat, accentuating the silence of the house.

"My sister has them," the man said, pulling a smoke in. "She said it was best while I... you know."

Sam didn't, but he could imagine. He hated this part of the job, the pushing and bullying of people who were already on the verge of losing it, after having lost so much already… But it was the only way to get some answers and Sam had no choice but to push through. "Mr. Groton, I know thi—"

"Greg... just call me Greg."

Sam nodded. "Greg... what can you tell me about your wife's..." he paused, searching for the less grating form of out it. "... delusions prior to her death?"

Another shaky drag on the cigarette, ash carelessly dumped on the beige carpet. "I already told the police about Doll's... illness," Greg said, his eyes darting all over the room, too nervous to settle in one spot. "She... she started hearing things, _seeing_ things in the house, things that no one else saw. Stuff that wasn't real."

"What kind of things?"

"She wouldn't say. She would just get very still, round eyes staring at nothing," the man said, his voice faltering as he remembered. "And she complained about the smell all the time."

"Smell?" Sam jumped in. If Dolores had smelled sulphur in the house maybe she'd been truly possessed... which would put a completely different spin on Sam's theory. "What did she say she could smell, Greg?"

"Jasmine. She said it was so sweet she couldn't stand it anymore."

No demons then. "And that was when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia?" Sam asked, needing to move the talk along. There was something in the man's stance and behavior... the hunter couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his instincts kept telling him that there was something off in Greg's grief.

Greg shook his head, eyes filling with fresh tears. "I didn't want to see it... didn't want to believe that my Doll was sick," he said, wiping his cheeks with an angry gesture. "She started saying that there were voices inside her head... demons, she called them. Said they wanted her to do things... to hurt people. She tried to... our baby girls—" A sob broke through the man's speech and he hid his face in his hands, lit cigarette forgotten between his fingers.

Sam sat quietly, patiently waiting for the man to get himself together. Sometimes, he had learned, silence was better than the right words to comfort someone.

There were a couple of shelves with books, lined up above the TV set. The smaller titles were hard to read, but the ones Sam could get were, at the very least, interesting thematic. There were a couple of Bibles, all well used, judging by the wrinkles in their spines; next to those was a bigger book, entitled 'Lives of Saints and Prophets'. Further down the shelf, there was another of which Sam could only make out part of the title as '... of the end of days'.

All in all, perfectly innocent books that Sam was sure graced the shelves of countless people all over the world. But in this house, with what had happened to this man's wife, Sam couldn't help but find their presence peculiar.

"After that," Greg went on, his voice raspy with pain, "we went looking for a doctor who c—"

"The doctors weren't the first people you went to for help, were they, Greg?" Sam found himself asking. He was practically certain now; what he was witnessing wasn't a man eaten by just grief and loss. Sam was pretty sure that there was guilt in there as well. Maybe Dolores hadn't been the one to go looking for the Exorcist at all.

"What—what do you mean?" Greg asked, red eyes blinking in Sam's direction.

"Are you a man of faith, Greg?" Sam asked, eyes going once more to the books on the shelf.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

There it was. The defensive tone Sam had been expecting.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with believing in something, in some higher power. Sam himself had been a believer almost all of his life. Would still be, if he didn't know the things that he knew.

People placed their faith in a lot of different beliefs and religions, practiced their faith in many and varied forms. What people of faith didn't usually displayed was guilt over their beliefs; not like Greg was pouring out right now.

Guilt was usually a sentiment that came only from doing something wrong.

"Your wife believed she was possessed by demons, Greg. She was suffering, she was lost and in pain," Sam ventured, pushing the man closer and closer to the brim wit each bull's-eyed word. "I know how it hurts to see a loved one suffer like that... we want to help them, want to do anything to stop their pain. And you went looking for help for your wife, didn't you, Greg?"

The man shrunk in his seat. The cigarette, burned to just a butt, fell from the man's fingers and he put it out with a stomp of his foot. The black stain on the carpet went unnoticed. "I have no idea wha—I mean, of course I—"

"The Catholic Church listened to your claims but wouldn't lift a finger. Not fast enough, anyway. They're too cautious, take took long, don't take a step without conducting their own investigations," Sam went on, ignoring the man's stuttering denials. He could see in Greg's eyes that he was damn near the truth. "But Dolores was fading fast, getting more and more violent, so you searched for an alternative. You found someone else who claimed to be able to exorcise the demons out of your wife, didn't you Greg?"

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Greg whispered faintly. The defensive tone and the denials were gone. The masks were gone. All that remained was man who had tried to save the woman he loved and failed. "You don't know what it's like—"

"I know exactly what it's like, Greg," Sam said gently, allowing the lingering pain and sorrow of not having been able to save Dean from Hell to soak his words and shine through. "To feel powerless; to feel like a failure at every step of the way; to know that, no matter what you do, your efforts won't be enough to help them."

Greg looked him in the eyes, hard enough to see the heavy burden in Sam's soul, the see a kindred failure in his heart.

"Where did you go, Greg?" Sam pushed forward, feeling like he was finally getting somewhere. "Who did you talk to?"

Greg shook his head, nicotine-yellow fingertips racing through his flat hair. "It's no use... I never saw him, never talked with him directly," he said, nervous words running over each other. "If I thought it would help I would've mentioned it to the cops earlier, but I didn't see... it was always a different acolyte—"

"Acolyte?"

Greg nodded. "His followers," he explained. "They were the ones who contacted people, who took note of whomever needed help from him. The Good Shepherd... that's what they called him."

Sam sat at the edge of the couch, eagerly absorbing every word Greg spoke. "Where? Where did these people meet you? How did you find them?"

Greg's eyes filled with sorrow, as if he could guess how important this was for Sam, how much it meant to him. "I heard one of them talking, one day when I stopped at the bakery to get a cake for the girls. I thought it was a sign from God, an answer to my prayers."

"Which bakery?"

"Doesn't matter," Greg said with a sight. "After Dolores was diagnosed, I forgot about them. And then, when she disappeared, I went back to the same place countless times; I even gave the address to the police, anonymously. The guy had just stopped there to buy bread... I never saw any of them again."

Sam sagged against the couch. A dead lead. That was all he had to show for his afternoon.

A dead lead that only got him a step closer to a dead Dean.

* * *

><p>A metallic click, a give in the handle and Dean stumbled outside. Fresh air hit him like a wet wall, cold and crisp and <em>real<em> and so very much less insane than what he'd been breathing for the past days that he almost giggled.

Dean took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the crispiness of the night, feeling it permeate his every pore, awakening his numb senses. Taking a quick look around his surroundings, Dean wasn't surprised to find woods all around him. He'd figured that the church had to be in some secluded place, far away from any chance of people hearing what was happening inside those walls.

God... how many people had died in that place, frightened and alone, at the hands of a mad man?

Trying his best to keep his mind away from that kind of thoughts, Dean took a good look around, hoping to find some sort of reference point that could tell him where the hell he was.

The mansion to the left, not ten yards away from the church, was a surprising presence. Decayed and half in ruins, the obviously once majestic house was now little more than three stories of foliage-covered walls and a front door blocked by the remains of a crumpled high balcony. Its collapse had left a gaping hole in the front of the structure, like a picture in some anatomy textbook of the human jaw, where the flesh and muscle had been torn away to reveal a clear view of a row of teeth and gums.

What Dean had assumed to be a church seemed now to be nothing more than a chapel, annexed to the main house.

Whoever owned the place had either died or abandoned it a long time ago and that just sucked because Dean would've really appreciated a car nearby that he could hotwire. Or a working phone…

Watching his breath turn into fog as soon as it left his mouth, Dean would've just settled for a warm coat.

There was a path leading down the woods and he could hear traffic some distance away, but Dean feared his legs wouldn't cooperate for much longer.

Already the pain and exhaustion were rising up to thwart his escape and he had to grit his teeth against the nearly overwhelming need to just stop and not move. Ever. But he drew on the need to survive alone and stumbled on, half walking, half dragging his feet over the unforgiving ground.

Hurt or not, instinct and survival had become life-skills honed by years of hunting and danger, from it the adrenaline flowed, it set Dean's teeth on edge, senses on high alert, and despite the cold of the night and the fact that he was all but naked, Dean was sweating. He wiped his forehead with his left hand, right one still gripping tightly the chains he'd brought with him.

The trees had eyes.

At least, that was what Dean felt as he made his way through the forest. Hundreds of tiny, beady eyes, following his every step and just waiting for him to trip and land on their waiting roots. Some, he noticed, were thicker than his torso; one revolving twist of those wooden snakes and he would disappear forever.

Twice he gazed back, sure that there was someone, some_thing_ following him; twice he almost landed face first on the floor, body not limber enough to juggle such contradictory actions as walking forward and looking back. Dean ignored the feeling of ants crawling down his neck, hair standing on attention and focused on getting as far away from the chapel as he could.

He was being paranoid, he was sure of that; it was just the added stress and strain of having been kept chained and abused for close to a week.

Dean almost laughed. Forty years of torture in Hell, at the hands of the most ruthless bastards that the Pitt had to offer and yet, a week with loony-in-diapers had shaken him hard enough to give him the jitters.

He could hear voices. At first, Dean convinced himself that the whispered words in the night were as real as the eyeballs on the trees.

The sound came and went with the wind, but the more he stumbled forward, the more defined the voices became.

There were definitely people in those woods.

For a second, Dean pondered his next move. In as much as he questioned the wisdom of relying on strangers to get him out of the damn woods and to safety, he didn't see that he had much choice. His body was shaking, from fatigue, from the cold, from every crap that had been flung his way in the past days; and Dean knew that, with his strength waning that fast, there was no way he would ever make it out of there on his own.

He wasn't thinking straight, Dean was aware of that much. It wasn't just the added paranoid or the shadows of things that he kept seeing through the corner of his eye. Easy decisions, choices that had required little effort on his part for most of his life, were becoming harder and harder to make, like his brain had been marinate in booze. Not for the first time, Dean wondered if the water that weirdo kept giving him was _only_ water.

Case in point, Dean realized slowly that, while following the wavering sound of the disembodied voices, he'd completely lost track of the sounds of driving cars he'd heard near the derelict house.

And even if, by some miracle, he stumbled across the road, who in his right mind would stop in the middle of nowhere to pick up a bloody man in tattered boxers?

Granted, the odds of someone just shooting him the minute Dean staggered into the wrong camp were about as high, but at least there they wouldn't have the choice of to just drive by and ignore him.

The orange glow of an open fire started peeking through the large tree trunks and Dean reset his internal compass in that direction. The proximity of help gave him strength, legs trembling less and almost able to carry his weight without complaint. The warm light, after wandering so long in the cold light of the moon had, apparently, made the decision for him.

The smell of roasted chicken and pork sausages frying in their own fat wafted across the crisp air and Dean felt his mouth water so hard and fast that he was one short step away from drooling. After a diet of dead snake, bile and water for the last several days, the smell of tofu stew would be delicious to him. The smell of crackling meat... was orgasmic.

Screw rescue, Dean decided. He would give his left nut for a bite of that barbeque.

Walking faster, Dean forced himself to think about what he would say to the people he was about to surprise. As far as he could hear, there were at least three young guys, talking about the last game they'd seen, apparently.

If Dean got there and admitted that he'd been kidnapped and kept a prisoner, there was no way those kids wouldn't drive him straight to a police station. Or a hospital, where in turn the police would be called just the same.

Thinking about his attire and the visible marks on his body, Dean figured his best chance was to call the whole thing a hazing gone bad. It would explain the lack of clothes, his presence in the woods and if he was convincing enough, no police would have to be involved.

The hunter in him made Dean stop before walking straight into the camp. Despite the despair, despite feeling like the last of his strength was rapidly waning away, there were some instincts that were ingrained too deeply to be ignored, even in dire circumstances.

Using a tree as cover, Dean looked the camp over. There were more guys than what he'd figured. A lot more.

He counted at least three fires going, each with about four to seven men and women sitting in badly shaped circles. They were all cooking and happily chatting, relaxed enough to not get a sense of the stranger spying on them.

Over two dozen strangers camping in the middle of woods who, as far as Dean could tell, were not boy-scouts. Could be that it was some kind of college gathering, or a really big group of friends who liked camping in the wild, or maybe one of those weird surviv—

It was hard to think over the tantalizing smell of food.

"Hey... is someone there?" one of the kids called out. He had a green hoodie and black jeans and was staring right at Dean. "Hey, mister! Are you okay?"

It was too late. The rest of the camp had already caught on to what was going on and everywhere Dean looked, people were getting up to come see who the new comer was.

Dean resisted the primal urge to puff out his chest and make himself look bigger. It was no use.

The camp's inhabitants looked harmless enough and Dean could read nothing but concern as they approached him with the same care one would a wild, wounded animal.

Dean supposed he kind of looked like one.

A kid, no more than four, peeked from behind his father's leg, and stared wide-eyed at Dean.

Now that he looked more closely, Dean could see more children, from toddlers to first graders, scattered around. What sort of camp _was_ that?

Try as he might, Dean couldn't spot any official looking building, or even a celebration banner to tell him who these people were and whether he should run or ask for their help.

The presence of children, however, calmed some of Dean's uncertainties and he took a step forward, escaping the shadow of the large tree trunk and nearing the approaching group.

There were a few gasps that Dean could not pinpoint as either pity or fear, but they managed to make him feel self-conscious in a way that he hadn't felt in decades.

"Good Shepherd..." a young woman whispered, lowering the hand she'd risen to hide her open-mouthed surprise. "What happened to you?" She was cute, young girl with long blond hair caught in a loose ponytail.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Dean hurried to point out, hiding the tiredness in his voice with his most casual stance. Proximity to the fire was making him shake harder with cold. "I ju-just ne-need to use a pho-phone... please?"

Dean jumped at the feeling of a warm blanket falling over his chilled shoulders, heart racing out of compass and hands coming up as fists. "Shit!"

He looked to his side; the blond guy, about Dean's age, with a reddish goatee and matching sideburns, who had effortlessly sneaked up on Dean, was backing away, hands raised in defense. Before the embarrassment of being so easily caught off guard could register, the warmth of the extra piece of clothing sunk in and Dean pulled the edges of the blanket closer to his chin. "Sorry about that man," he offered with a nod. "Thanks."

The little kid who'd been gaping up at him lost some of his shyness and let go of his dad's leg, taking two steps forward as his thumb flew to his mouth. "You don't need to be afraid of me, little man," Dean offered him with his best smile.

Sam had his puppy-dog eyes that, like lethal laser beams, that never failed to melt anyone they were aimed at, but Dean knew he wasn't entirely unarmed in the matter of endearing features. If there was one thing that Dean always knew he could count on was the fact that his smile had the inane ability to conquer the trust of small children and disarm the panties out of hot women.

Except for that kid. Dean's smile made him run for cover all over again.

"Daddy..." the little kid said in between heartfelt sucks of his thumb. "Is dath man a demon? Like the bad ones you told me about?"

Dean was sure he'd heard wrong. What were the odds of coming across two groups of people aware of supernatural beings such as demons, in the span of the same week? Or maybe he was still in Blue Earth and these people were part of that same community...

The man picked up the kid, and ruffled his brown, curly hair. "You know we need not fear demons, Gil," the kid's father said, hushing the child. "The good Shepherd is here to protect us from them. He is the light that protects us all."

All of a sudden, Dean got a very uneasy feeling about these people. For some reason, he got the impression that the 'good shepherd' was not a generic reference to God and there was something very wrong about the looks they were giving him. Dean could feel his skin crawling all over again.

Defenseless, he curled his hands into empty fists under the protection of the blanket; he'd tossed the metal chain away. There had been no point in approaching anyone for help while armed with a lengthy weapon.

Dean really, really regretted that decision now as this group raised more and more suspicions in his mind. "Cute kid," he pointed out sarcastically before turning his attention to the rest of the group. "Look, I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but the thing is," he said as he backed away slowly. There really was no where to run. "I was robbed... they took my car, my clothes... it's been a really shitty day, so, if you don't mind—"

"You're that poor lost soul the Good Shepherd told us about," one of the women said, coming closer to Dean, detachedly analyzing the marks on his body. "The one he's been working so hard to save," she said with such reverence and awe for this 'good shepherd' guy that it sounded like Jesus walked the Earth.

"I know your face," another said, stepping to the front of the crowd. "The Good Shepherd told us about you, the one the angels warned him about," the woman said, her eyes round with recognition and fear.

Dean took another step back, cursing when his back hit a tree trunk. He was trapped. "I have no idea what you're on about, lady." Dean's hands curled into fists. As a rule, he really, really didn't enjoy hurting clueless civilians and these sounded more clueless than most. That freak in diapers seemed to have convinced them that he was some kind of savior because he heard angels, but if they knew what their '_shepherd__'_ had been doing locked in that abandoned chapel... "Your shepherd is hurting people! Killing them! You guys are not safe here," Dean tried to warn them.

"That is Dean Winchester!" someone else called out, followed by agreeing voices. "The angels told our Shepherd all about him! The beacon of Satan, the bringer of damnation!"

Dean's eyebrow rose on its own accord. He was _what_?

The face of man holding the little kid lost its earlier pleasantness; he was frowning at Dean. "The Good Shepherd warned us about the many lying faces of evil, of the devil's forked tongue of silver," he spat out, putting the kid down. "This is his test, and we will not fail. Let us pray."

Dean threw the first blow before their 'prayers' could reach his skin, hoping to play the surprise card and punch his way out of the surrounding crowd. There was no way he was letting these weirdos take him back to head-weirdo.

The nose of the guy Dean managed to hit exploded in a bloody mess and he went down with a yelp. Two more replaced him even before he'd touched the ground.

Dean lost track of whom he hit. There was no time to take care in avoiding punching women and children. They all joined in, their eyes filled with the fevered notion that they were doing the right thing.

They were too many.

There had been this one moment in the Pitt, one particular time Alastair had lost his patience with Dean's continuous denials, when he had put down his blade and walked away. Dean remembered it clearly, crisply, because of the fleeting second of triumph he had felt then.

When Alastair came back, shortly after, he wasn't alone.

For one who didn't like to share his toys, the demon had opened an exception that time. 'Happy hour with Dean Winchester', he had called it, a free access pass open to every demon in the Pitt to Hell's most famous soul.

Alastair had sat back, crossed his arms and smiled as he watched the frenzy of blood and guts.

As someone shoved him down on the earth and stepped on his back, Dean found himself thinking that Earth wasn't so different from Hell after all.

This was it. Game over.

* * *

><p>Sam felt the vibration in his pocket as his cell phone announced that he'd received a message. His head still reeling from what he'd heard from Greg Groton, he numbly picked the phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen.<p>

Bobby. A simple message saying _'__Meet__ me __at __2527, __Oakton__ Street__'_.

Heart hammering against his chest and brain steadily supplying him with the worst possible scenarios, Sam hit the gas and sped his way through the streets of Chicago's harbor to the outskirts of the city.

Five days. It had been five days since Dean had gone missing and in between looking for him in the wrong city at first, and not getting a single break in finding his whereabouts, Sam couldn't help but feel the weight of disaster looming over his head. All he could think of was that Dean's body had been found at the address Bobby had given him; that the hunt was over and he'd failed at saving his brother. Again.

Sam was speeding to meet Dean's mangled body. That was the only possibility, he was sure of that.

And Castiel was too weak to bring Dean back; after all, Bobby was still stuck in that wheelchair because the angel couldn't even fix a spine these days. And this deranged killer, he cut out people's eyes and ripped open their chests...

The drive was over before Sam could decide that he wasn't strong enough to do this. Bobby's van was parked at the end of the street, outside a place marked as North Shore Recycling. The older hunter was waiting for him at the entrance, Castiel standing by his side. The grim looks on their faces made Sam start to sweat.

"Thought you might want to see this for yourself," Bobby said as soon as Sam was within hearing distance. "It looks pretty bad."

Sam's vision disappeared for a couple of seconds, only to return under a veil of water. "Is it— where?"

He couldn't even finish the sentence. Putting it to words would only make it real sooner than it had to be.

"Second row, end of the line," Bobby told him, an odd look on his face.

Shock, Sam thought absently as he left them behind and tore off down through the salvage yard.

The yard was bigger than Bobby's, filled with the same mix of mangled cars and loose pieces. For some reason, Sam figured it was fitting that this should be Dean's final resting place.

At the end of the row there was a familiar sight, but it wasn't Dean's mangled body. It was mangled, certainly, in a way that was painful to see, but it had no flesh.

The Impala.

The front hood was twisted and bent out of shape; a butt had been carved in the middle, like the car had been driven straight against a light pole.

Sam felt like laughing. Dean would kill him if he ever caught Sam laughing at his damaged 'baby', but mangled steel was infinitely better than mangled flesh. Dean's flesh.

And then Sam remembered that Dean had probably been at the wheel of the car when the damage was done and all the relief he'd felt for not having to face his brother's dead body, evaporated from Sam's mind.

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

THE EXORCIST

PART 4

"_Evil __is __Someone, __Someone __who __is __multiple __and __whose __name __is __legion... __It __is __one __thing __to __be __in __the __realm __of __the __demons, __as __we __all __are __when __we __have __lost __the __state __of __grace, __and __quite __another __to __be __held __and __surrounded, __literally __possessed __by __him_."

Legion walked the Earth. He could see it in every mother who sold her baby for crack; he could see it in every father who defiled his daughter or son's bed with vile intents; he could see it in every depravity of man with beast, of man with man. Boundaries broken and mocked like they were made of snow, melted away under the heat of flesh and animal urges.

Murder, rape, depravity in every corner, treated like normal things of every day life; nothing but scorn and contempt for the Lord above, nothing but disregard and disobedience for those who guarded His word on Earth.

It was no wonder to the Shepherd that the angels had searched him for help. So many others did.

For years, he had done the Lord's work with nothing but faith to sustain his beliefs. Where others had faltered and accused him of being a murderer, of being insane, his faith had stood strong and prevailed. And his reward had been magnificent.

Zachariah, the angel who talked with him, had visited during the night. A bright star of celestial light that had flooded the small cell that he had taken as his living quarters and filled him with the grace of the Lord.

The Shepherd had been chosen, the angel had confided in him; chosen to serve Heaven in a very important quest. Find Dean Winchester.

The reasons why Heaven wanted such a man found were not given and he knew it was not his place to ask. Just obey.

This was his test and he would not fail to fulfill the task placed on his shoulders. He need only wait for the sign that he was sure God would send to him; to be alert and ready to complete his mission.

The commands left to him by the angel were simple: pray as fervently as he could when he laid eyes on Dean and stay clear of the man's path. The Shepherd, however, was not like other men; he did not bow down from his responsibilities and when faced with evil, he did not run away like a dog with his tail between his legs. He fought it.

Word that a town overridden by demons had reached his congregation. Legion was about and it stomped the Earth with bitter boots in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Casting demons out of people was what he did best; there was no other choice but to abandon familiar grounds and take the fight to where it was needed.

How he had not seen that as a sign from above, he did not know, but finding Dean Winchester amongst a pack of demons in Blue Earth had not surprised him that much. The Lord was sometimes complex; others, painfully simple.

Zachariah had filled his mind with everything he needed to know about Dean. What he looked like, who he traveled with, which car he drove, even what he liked to eat.

When a black, '67 Impala sped past him, running from Blue Earth, there had been no doubts in his mind that God had put him in the right path and that he had found the right man.

Once Dean Winchester was in his possession, it was clear why the angels had warned him about this man. It was like staring into the heart of pure evil.

The Shepherd could sense the demons inside Dean, could feel them struggling and scratching their way to the surface. Of all the people he had helped so far, Dean seemed to be the worst case he'd ever encountered.

Satan's grip was so deeply and strongly engraved inside Dean Winchester that the mere touch by someone with a pure soul was bound to leave a mark on Dean's skin. It had been an accident, the Shepherd knew that, but he could see the handprint brand that his touch had left on Dean's shoulder.

Following that, he was very careful to not touch Dean again. After all, he was there to rescue him, not cause him harm.

He had used all of his skills, prayed as hard and heartfelt as he could. And yet the demons refused to leave Dean's soul.

Evil, when confronted with a stronger force, with a touch from God, retracts, like all cowardly things are bound to do. The Shepherd had been too forgiving; too lenient towards Dean and the demons in him had used that weakness to escape.

His followers, gentle and illuminated people that they were, had been a bit... over-enthusiastic in capturing Dean Winchester.

He crunched down on the church's floor, near the one standing pew. The figure draped over it was still unconscious, breathing made heavier by the accentuate angle of his chest.

He had used ropes this time. The chains had proven useless on this one, it would seem. Even so, there was no escaping now. Not with both hands and feet bound as they were.

The position, painful as it looked, was as unavoidable as it was effective. The ropes around the wrists were secured to the ring on the floor, while those binding his ankles were connected to a second ring, all that was left of a third row pew. Between the two rings, the sinner was effectively stretched on his back, seemingly hanging in the air with his back supported by the remaining pew.

The Shepherd hated this part of the process, but in most cases, it was unavoidable. Rarely did the early attempts at cleansing succeed in purifying the soul.

The rod and the cilice, although crude, did their work in softening the demons' hold on these poor souls, earthly objects made holy by their use and purpose. But the snakes were never wrong and they knew their own kind.

No.

For most part, the cleansing needed to go deeper than skin before the Good Word could do as it was intended and free sinners from their burden.

Water.

Water cleaned all sins.

* * *

><p>"How'd you find it?" Sam asked as he heard Bobby and Castiel join him by the damaged Impala. He'd opened the driver's door, peeking inside for any sign that could help them find Dean. The smear of blood on the window hadn't escaped his notice.<p>

"I do work in the business, ya' known," Bobby reminded him. "Still got a few contacts in the area. Told them to be on the look out for any classic black cars that showed up in their radars."

"Where?"

"Just off the 290, near Cicero."

"He was going to see Lisa," Sam said with a sad look. He had been right; Dean had been on a farewell tour before someone had driven him off the road.

"Who?" Bobby asked, rolling away to give Sam some room as he went to the trunk. "The weapons are all there, I assume… the compartment's still locked."

Sam nodded. Dean would be pissed if they had to start their 'collection' from scratch. It was bad enough that he would have to repair the Impala yet again… "Lisa Braeden," he explained the older hunter, even though Cass also looked curious. "She and Dean had a…" _wild__sex__weekend_, "… thing, a couple of years back. She has a kid… we drive by once in awhile, to check up on them."

"Dean's kid?" Bobby asked with a raised brow.

"She says no," Sam answered in a tone that told Bobby how much that detail didn't matter. Dean had a soft spot for that family; enough for them to be a part of his dreams, even if that was something Sam was sure his brother wouldn't want him sharing. "The car's clean."

"Aside for the tree-shaped ass in the front and Dean's blood all over the driver's seat, you mean" Bobby added. "This guy has been too careful and methodical to slip up now."

"I guess," Sam said, disappointed. "Can you… I don't know, catch a vibe or something off of it?" he asked the silent angel.

Castiel canted his head to the side, momentarily confused by Sam's words. "The car is still. There are no… vibes."

"I meant from the guy who took Dean," Sam clarified. It was hard getting used to Castiel's… shortcomings where it concerned the English language.

"I can sense the souls of every person that has ever driven or touched this car," Castiel supplied. "There are thousands of them. It is impossible to tell which one caused this."

Sam ran a hand through his hair. It was a long shot, but they were literally grasping at straws here. And Dean was out there, somewhere, in the hands of a crazy bastard. Just minutes ago, he had been sure that he was going to find Dean's corpse in that graveyard. Sam was not going to give fate a second chance at making that nightmarish event become real. "That's it," he vented, closing the Impala's door with a bang. "I'm done with the sensible route, Bobby. We're doing the séance. Now."

"There's still some files we haven't checked," Bobby reasoned, even as his voice lacked the initial conviction. The sight of Dean's blood, flecking from the closed window was a hard argument to ignore. "Maybe there's something in there that—"

"No," Sam simply said. "The cops are never going to catch this guy, and neither are we if we stick to the rules."

"You don't know that, son."

Sam focused his gaze on the older man, resolve and anger seeping to the surface. "This Exorcist, this murderer," he spat, "he has people helping him out. Followers who call him good shepherd and do his bidding as a good herd of sheep. Maybe all they do is lure the victims in, maybe they're even involved in the torture," he explained. "But the point is that the police don't even have a clue about their existence or that they might be looking at more than one killer. And when they do get a clue, it will take them months, if not years to infiltrate this guy's flock. It's been five days already, Bobby," he pleaded. "We're doing this now or all we'll see of Dean is a corpse with an open rib cage."

* * *

><p>There was a crow staring down at him, head bent forward and dark wings neatly tucked by his side, perched up high on a ceiling beam.<p>

Dean swallowed, dry mouth pouring dust down his throat. His Adam's apple bobbed awkwardly up and down, stretched too thin on his extended neck.

For a fleeting second, Dean was sure he'd fallen asleep on Bobby's lame-assed study chair again. It had to be the wooden one, the damn thing never failed to make his ass sore and with the too short back, that always meant a sore neck when Dean woke up from his impromptus naps.

There were no crows in Bobby's house, however. And he was definitely not sitting.

The awkwardness of his position registered with Dean's short-firing neurons soon enough. He was on his back, balanced like a counterweight on top of something solid and cold, his head and torso angling down to counter the weight of his legs, extended in the air.

Dean pulled at the bindings holding his arms extended. The thick ropes coiled around his wrists tightened and his left one exploded in pain.

It was like a switch, flipping in his brain and casting light over what had happened and where he was.

The woods.

The damn camp of freaks that fell down on him like a pack of wolves.

Dean looked around, dizzy to find the world upside down. He was back in the abandoned church. Back with the insane man who cut out people's eyes.

"You shouldn't have run," the man's voice, growing to be annoyingly familiar by now, sounded from somewhere south of Dean's legs. "For you, nothing has changed; for my followers, however, it was an… unpleasant surprise."

Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Odds were, that too would hurt. "What? Did I burst their bubble of illusion of how buckets of crazy their leader really is?"

It took a moment for Dean to identify the mirthless, dry noise that the other man let out, as a laugh. "Do not elude yourself, Dean Winchester. You are not the victim in this and neither are my followers' misguided people who are not aware of what my work compromises. In time, they too will be ready to carry the burden."

Dean meant to snort at the load of crap he was being fed, but the position and the dust in the air were doing a number on his throat and all that he managed was a nasty cough that ripped through his body in waves of pain. "Shit!"

"I wish I didn't have to do this," the man said, entering Dean's limited field of vision. "But you leave me no other choice."

Dean hated to admit it even to himself, but he dreaded to find out what that lunatic was carrying in his hands this time around. After being beaten, bitten and flogged, the three-gallon water bottle seemed innocent enough. The leather strap hanging from diaper-man's other hand, however, looked anything but.

"Hey... hey, now!" Dean wheedled, eyeing the ring gag hanging from the other man's fingers. While he hated the fact that his voice broke even as he spoke, there was no denying that the sight of the ring gag left him more than a little freaked out. "I thought you were all pro-celibacy and crap like that." Swallowing at the unease, he continued, "What's with the sex toys?"

The other man looked at the contraption he has holding. He seemed disgusted just from touching it. "A necessary evil," he said. "The demons will fight and resist the cleansing; this will ensure that you are not denied the chance of redemption by their actions."

Dean had no idea what the guy was on about, but it sounded screwed up in all kinds of ways. "Look... whatever you're thinking you have to do, you don't. You really, really don't," he started, rushing words out, as the other man got closer and closer. His neck ached from the strain of lifting his head and his back was on fire for the overtaxed muscles, but at the moment all that he could think was that he had to stop whatever was coming up next. "Did an angel tell you to do this?" Dean went on, remembering what the others had said in the camp. "Was it Zachariah? That guy is a dick, you really can't trust a word that comes out of his mou—"

The rest of Dean's words were pushed back down his throat by the metal ring being shoved inside his mouth. It knocked against his teeth with a scrapping sound, filling Dean's mouth with a taste of cold iron. The straps in the back were lithely done behind his head, hair trapped in the leather and pulling at his skull.

"Ghwt twis swith awwth!" Dean protested as loud and hard as he could, his eyes conveying all the hatred his 'words' failed to pass along.

It was the oddest of sensations; he could waggle his tongue all he wanted, but no words were forming because he couldn't move his lips even an inch.

Diaper-man –and Dean really, really didn't wanted to think about the fact that only a flimsy piece of cloth separated that lunatic's nuts from Dean's wide opened and locked mouth- ignored his mangled protests as he stood above Dean's head. He was doing that open-arms, head-tilted-back weird thing of his. Praying for illumination, Dean figured. Was it too much to ask for that illumination to come down in the form of a lightning bolt right about now?

Dean struggled against his bindings, hating the fact that he was as vulnerable here and now as he had been for all of his stay in Hell. God! even the damn way he was stretched out beyond his muscles abilities felt like the damn rack.

There had been days when Alastair's knife wasn't even needed. All the demon had to do was pull the wheel on the rack and stretch, stretch, stretch until Dean could feel cartilage tearing, muscle ripping and blood start to flow. Then Alastair used his knife.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and pushed the memories away. The last thing he needed right now was a trip down memory lane on top of the fucked up situation he had going on there.

When he opened his eyes again, Dean had an epiphany.

There was a plastic rosary inside the water bottle. It swished around the bottom as the lunatic raised it from the floor and placed it above Dean's head.

With a sudden and certain clarity, Dean realized two things: that was meant to be holy water and, with his mouth gaping open like that and his head tilted back as it was, he was going to drown in it.

* * *

><p>"Pick one," Bobby said as they entered the motel room. He rolled to the bed they'd been using as an extra table and grabbed the pile of folders that sat on the mattress. "I'll go round up the supplies."<p>

Sam moved to the bed with a sigh. His feet dragged over the threadbare carpet like they weighed a hundred pounds each. He knew what Bobby was doing, and he really couldn't blame the older man.

Of over a dozen people who'd been tortured and murdered, who do you chose to disrupt their eternal rest on top of everything else? Who do you call back to Earth to ask questions they might not know the answer to? Who do you elect to turn into a restless spirit fully aware that you might have to end the night burning their remains?

Bobby wasn't going to stop him from doing it, but he sure as hell wasn't doing Sam's dirty work for him either.

Sam flipped through the files, skimming the information. If it weren't for the fact that they needed to plan ahead and find themselves a witness that they could easily put to rest afterwards, Sam would've just closed his eyes and randomly picked one.

But two of the victims had been hookers, a man and a woman, and when neither body had been claimed, the city had arranged for their cremation.

Four others, two drug addicts, a stripper and a drug dealer had been shipped back to their respective families, outside of the Chicago area. One had even been shipped out of the country, back to his homeland, in Peru.

The gay bartender from District 5 had also been cremated, according to his written wishes.

Sam stared at Dolores Groton's file. The face of her husband, eyes guilt-ridden and heart-broken, were still fresh in his memory. She was also one of the few buried in Chicago.

'_She__'__s__ already __dead__'_ Sam reminded himself, '_Dean__'__s __still __alive __and__ she __can__ do __something __about__ it__'__._

The arguments were good; Sam knew that on an intellectual level. In his heart, though, he knew this was wrong. Very wrong.

"We're ready," Bobby called out from the actual table. Castiel sat by his side, silent, waiting for a name that could lead them to Dean.

A linen cloth had been placed over the cheap plastic table; the candles were in place, waiting to be lit.

"Let's call Dolores Groton," Sam said, taking his seat heavily.

* * *

><p>Dean could only think that irony was a bitch. A vengeful bitch, at that. After all, he'd been dying of thirst for days now, right?<p>

Somehow, having three gallons of water force-poured down his airways was not Dean's idea of quenching his thirst.

After that quick realization, all rational thought abandoned him. All Dean could do was try and breathe through the onslaught of water.

It was an impossible task.

His mouth being pushed wide open by the damn ring gag, the only way of escape Dean had was to turn his face to the side, hoping most of the water missed the opening.

It stood to reason that Dean hadn't been the first one to try that. Or that this was the first time that man had dealt with someone in this manner, a person trying to survive the damn water onslaught. And failing.

That explained the ease with which Dean's head was swiftly trapped in between the man's knobby knees, effectively preventing him from turning away. The hold also freed the guy's hands to hold the bottle above Dean's head. No where to run, no way of stopping what was happening.

Complete loss of control and power. It scared the crap out of Dean.

It was like being held under water. The downpour of liquid got everywhere. Dean's mouth, his nose, his eyes...

He swallowed as much as he could, hoping to catch a lungful of air in between gulps, but all his lungs were supplied with was water as well.

Dean's throat spasmed, gag reflex being hit time after time. The urge of bile upwards was swiftly washed away by the water coming in the opposite direction.

Time meant nothing now. The world around him was rapidly losing focus and color. He'd seen the water bottle; it was only three gallons, which meant that only a couple of seconds could've gone by. To Dean's battered and abused body, however, it felt like minutes; hours. It felt like he was dying for the longest of time.

When the water did stop, Dean was still choking on what was trapped in his throat and the gallon or so that his stomach was trying to push back up.

The man in diapers released his head. The second Dean felt the pressure on his temples loosen, he immediately turned his head to the side, and vomited what felt like the whole three gallons of water.

Now that he had a chance to breath, Dean found that he couldn't. He was coughing and wheezing and try as he might, there was not enough air going through.

He wanted to scream at the man to stop, wanted to tell him that, whatever Zachariah had said, the angel would probably get a little pissed when he finds out that this man had killed Dean. But there wasn't enough breath in his lungs to form any words, and even if there were, the damn gag spreading his lips wouldn't let him speak them.

The world was spinning and Dean had no safety bar to grab onto.

Out of the corner of his vision, Dean could see the man coming back to his side. There was another large water bottle dangling from his hand.

Dean couldn't help but whimper.

* * *

><p>There were ways to call out spirits and there were <em>ways<em> of calling out spirits. If it were about calling a restless spirit, trapped on Earth and wandering about, either way would get the same results. Even a simple Ouija Board would do the trick.

If the spirit had already moved on, like they're supposed to do, the less traumatic way to talk to one was through a psychic, a medium. They were like human 'supernatural radio-antennas', with the ability to tune into the other side and report back the answers.

The alternative was to reel a spirit in, snag it from the other side and back to the world of the living.

"You sure about this, Sam?" Bobby asked one last time, his face more concerned than angry now.

Sam could see in the other man's expression that he agreed with him, and while neither of them liked it, they could at least agree on one thing; they'd run out of options, and more importantly, Dean was running out of time even faster.

"Light the candles," Sam said and reached over to grab Castiel's hand. Once the candles were glowing softly, Bobby set down the lighter and did the same.

Sam couldn't help but noticed, as he grabbed the angel's cold hand, that Cass was now where Dean sat the last time they'd done something like this. That time, they'd had an actual medium to help them out, Pamela, and she'd lost her eyes, trying to catch just a glimpse of Castiel.

Sam hoped they didn't lose something worse searching for his brother.

The lights had been turned off, but the room was hardly in the dark. The soft glow of the three candles and the red neon light that came through the window, cast deep shadows in the faces of the three men seated at the table. Bobby, small piece of paper resting on the table by his side, began reciting the Latin invocation that would summon the spirit of the Dolores Groton to their midst.

Before the older hunter could say more than one _'__Invocatis__'_, Cass pulled his hands free to clutch at his head. His face scrunched up in pain.

"Cass?" Sam called out, tentatively reaching out a hand to touch the angel's tense shoulder. "What is it?"

"Dean," he gasped. "There's too many of them..."

And with that he was gone.

Sam stared dumbstruck at Bobby, the older man's face mirroring his confusion.

"T'hell was that?"

Sam's eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose. "I have n—too many Deans?" he ventured, trying to figure out what the angel had been trying to say before he'd flapped his wings and vanished.

"I'm pretty sure that wasn't it," Bobby let out. His gaze caught on the flickering flames of the candles, hand coming up to scratch his beard. "Now what?"

Sam bit his bottom lip. Wherever Cass had run to, it had something to do with Dean. "I guess we wait for him to come back."

When he leaned forward to blow the candles out, the red, neon glow was all that was left. It made the whole room seem bathed in blood.

* * *

><p>The Good Shepherd had been pleased with their diligent work. When he had been called, after the group had managed to subdue Dean Winchester, there had been words of praise as well as concern.<p>

The Good Shepherd worried about them and feared what might happen to their pure souls if they'd been exposed to the demons inside Dean for much longer. Especially the young ones.

He needn't have worried though; the group was exalted by the feeing of being useful, of making the world a safer place, of helping the one who carried the burden of their safety without a word of complaint.

"Let us join in prayer, my brothers," Tim, the unspoken group leader, called out.

They gathered around the larger fire pit, hands joined in communion, faces filled with the cleansing warmth of fire.

"Let us pray for the strength necessary to conquer our enemies," Tim called out, his eyes closed as he waited for the others to repeat his words.

"Lets us pray for wisdom to follow our Shepherd without fear." "Let us pray for Dean Winchester... may his soul be free from sin once again." "Let us pray for our Good Shepherd, may he—"

"Yes, yes, that's quite enough," a voice broke through the quiet chanting, disrupting the cadence. The group looked as one towards the large man in a business suite, who stood leaning against one of the trees, arms folded in front of his chest. "Now, where can I find this... Good Shepherd of yours?"

"Who are you?" Tim asked, starting to rise to his feet. Was it possible that they would have two tests to pass on the same night? Was this yet another demon?

The man in the suite rolled his eyes, looking bored. He extended one arm, pointing at a random tree branch. In the otherwise calm night, the crackle of a lightning bolt sounded like an exploding bomb.

The people gathered around the fire screamed and jump to their feet, not sure whether to run or throw themselves at the mercy of that powerful and mysterious 'man'.

The tree branch fell to the ground in an array of smoldering ambers and the man in the suite blew on his finger, pretending to hold an invisible smoking gun. "I'm someone that really hates been kept waiting," he said with a pointed look. His hand, finger extended, rummaged through the frightening group, like it was loaded and ready to fire again. "Now... where is this Shepherd of yours and where is he keeping Dean Winchester?"

* * *

><p>The call had been so loud that Castiel had felt like a balloon had exploded inside his head. Prayers were usually quite and soothing, gentle voices raised to the Heavens in contemplation and faith.<p>

Maybe it was the fervor with which these voices were calling out, or maybe it was the fact that Castiel had been keeping an... 'eye out', as Dean would've said, to any chatter carrying the hunter's name.

He had not expected more than twenty voices to do it at the exact same time.

Not wasting time explaining himself to either Sam or Bobby, Castiel had flown to the source of the call. He had hoped that he would find Dean Winchester when he'd arrived at the spot in the middle of the trees, but all he saw was a group of humans, sitting around a fire.

He was about to make his presence known and demand to know what those people knew about Dean's whereabouts when another angelic presence made itself visible.

Zachariah.

Of course he had been paying attention to the calls as well. The superior angel was completely invested in delivering Dean to Michael and seemed willing to stop at nothing to achieve his goal.

Castiel kept himself out of view as Zachariah proceeded to terrify the group of humans into telling him where Dean was.

Misguided souls, led into atrocious actions by another, much like the habitants of Blue Earth who'd been deceived by the Whore, the group stood its ground even in the face of Zachariah's most theatrical displays of power. It was almost worthy of respect, were it no for the reasons behind their choice.

When Zachariah lost his patience and unfolded his wings for all to see and realize what he was, Castiel couldn't help but to think back to when he'd been forced to do the same to prove his claims, back when he had first encountered a flesh and blood Dean. Convincing his soul, trapped in Alastair's clutches, that Castiel was an angel of the Lord had been much easier, but then again, Dean had had no choice in the matter back then, no when the angel had grabbed him and flown them both out of Hell.

The sight of Zachariah's wings was met with a much different reaction than the one Dean had shown in that abandoned shed.

Most people of the group fell to their knees, awestruck by the sight of an angel. The others were too stunned and fearful to react.

One thing they all had in common. After that, there was no keeping them quiet about Dean's whereabouts.

The second Castiel had heard his friend's location, he was gone without a glance behind.

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

THE EXORCIST

PART 5

Dean was sure he'd passed out at some point. The water just kept coming and his thoughts were watered down. He lost track of events, skipping chunks of what was happening, like a scratched record, skimming a slow song.

Every time the mad-man was done with one water bottle, Dean had a few minutes of respite as he went to pick the next one. After the third, Dean figured that the guy was going to use as many bottles as needed until Dean stopped struggling and died.

Even the crows seemed to know that. 'Die! Die! Die!' they seemed to cackle, their sound shrill, grating and echoing through the cracked walls with mounting enthusiasm.

Dean's skin felt bloated, his stomach distended and swimming in water. His limbs, stretched taught and secured, had long lost all feeling. Dean was a broken cork, floating in water, waiting to sink.

'Die! Die! Die!'

Even the silent figures on the stained glass windows agreed with the crows, staring down at him with pity in their dead eyes, not understanding why he resisted the inevitable.

There had been more reciting from the same black book diaper-man carried around with him, discombobulated words that floated in the air like soup-letter. Dean figured he was suppose to react to the 'powerful' words being whispered in his direction, but all he could care about was that diaper-man couldn't read and pour water at the same time.

But even those brief moments, when the water stopped and Dean foolishly allowed himself to believe that it was all over, had become their own little form of torture as well.

Every time, every single time, a few passages later, once diaper-man was convinced that the 'demons' inside Dean's had heard enough, the water was back. It felt heavier and heavier every time it started anew.

'Die! Die! Die!'

The crows were right. Dean allowed himself to float away -and wasn't the expression ironic as fuck- from that abandoned church; away from the man who was slowly killing him and most importantly, far from the deeply seeded feeling that he had failed his purpose of stopping Lucifer.

The crows screeching chant, "Die! Die! Die!" serenaded his slow drift and followed him beyond.

His father was there, and Michael was there. Standing side by side, they stared down at him, frowning. They seemed disappointed with his weakness, angered by his utter failure.

A little further on and Sam was there, Bobby, Castiel too, all three looking at him with pity; he had failed them the most, abandoning them to their fate, thinking that he could have done something about it.

There was a veil of water covering everything and Dean watched those scowling faces, diluted away further and further and further...

"That's quite enough," a familiar voice boomed. "For now."

The steady downpour of water ceased with a splashing sound as the bottle hit the ground.

Dean knew that voice. He couldn't quite place a name or a face on it yet, but the feelings of disgust and anger that the voice invoked in him, assured Dean that it was someone he knew. More than he wanted to.

Right now, however, the voice was telling the water to stop and the water obeyed and Dean fucking loved the sound of that voice.

Coughing and vomiting whatever extra liquid his stomach managed to cast out, Dean struggled back to the surface, willing his brain to come up with some sort of rational thought. Supply him with a name. It felt important that Dean _knew_ who had spoken.

"It is you," diaper-man said. There was such reverence and awe in the man's voice that Dean shuddered. The idea that there was someone able to earn such a reaction from that naked freak... it was terrifying.

"Why didn't you call me as you were commanded?" the now annoyed voice demanded. The new arrival sounded like some small potatoes businessman, aspiring to bigger dealings.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the church as voice owner slowly made his way to Dean's side.

Dean was too spent and exhausted to raise his head and find out who it was, even if curiosity was making him consider the effort. He didn't need to look, though; he could feel his eyes on him, skimming through the level of damage displayed on his body.

It made Dean feel acutely naked and exposed before his enemies, laid out and bound before them. Helpless and powerless, more vulnerable than he could ever recall feeling in his life. He closed his eyes, salted water leaking through.

It was all he could do not to show the fear that was clawing its way to the surface of his abraded skin. It made him want to scream.

"I was doing my job, oh exalted one," the other man replied, defensive, offended. "That was the reason why you inspired me with your visit earlier, was it not? To find Dean Winchester and to rid his soul of its demons?"

A shadow fell over his face and Dean opened his eyes on reflex. Zachariah was looking down at him, smiling.

"I supposed you did," the angel said, answering diaper-man's question. "Hello, Dean."

* * *

><p>"You must come with me," Castiel said as soon as he materialized in the room where he'd left Sam and Bobby. "Now."<p>

"Wow! Where, why and what the hell happened?" Sam let out in quick succession, pulling his arm out of Cass' reach. He had a feeling that had he not, the angel would've just whisked him away without a word.

"Where's the fire, son?" Bobby joined in, rolling his wheelchair closer to the angel. Cass seemed more disheveled than usual.

Castiel looked at him confused. "There is no fire, that I know of," he pointed out. "I have, however, learned Dean's whereabouts."

The simple affirmation brought Sam to his feet. Bobby clenched the wheels of his chair tighter, clearly wishing he could do the same.

"Where?"

"Is he okay?"

The questions where simultaneous and equally vehement, both men eager for news.

"There is no time for lengthy explanations," the angel said, turning to Sam once more. "Grab your weapons and ready yourself. We must hurry."

"We'll settle for the short version," Bobby growled as his patience thinned. The angel seemed allergic to giving answers. Also, it hadn't escaped his notice that Cass planned to take only Sam with him, disregarding Bobby's aid without even a blink.

"You were right," Castiel said, his eyes on Sam. "The Exorcist has followers, camped close to his location. They prayed for strength, so their leader could cleanse Dean's soul."

"Jesus!" Sam let out, his legs folding. The bed broke his landing, files sliding to the floor unnoticed. It was one thing to put clues together and theorize that a lunatic had Dean in his clutches; it was another to know for certain that, for the past week, Dean had been in that man's hands, being tortured.

"They armed? Where is he keeping Dean?" Bobby asked, choosing to keep his mind on the task rather than wallow in despair. His face was as white-washed as Sam's, but if both of them let their feelings run wild, Dean would never be rescued. And speaking of rescue… "Why didn't you just grab him and leave?"

"They're unarmed," Castiel said, sounding progressively distressed by their continuous questions and Sam's inaction. "I have not seen Dean, but I know wh—"

"What do you mean, you didn't see him?" Sam pointed out. "Is he even ali-"

"You don't understand!" Castiel cut in, his voice rising in one. "It was a _prayer_. Every angel in creation heard it."

"Zachariah," Sam supplied and before Castiel could nod he moved to get his gun. The weapon would do nothing about the angel, but the Exorcist would be fair game. Sam planned to fill that psychotic son-of-a-bitch with so much lead, the freak would think himself a change purse by the time Sam was done.

"He was already there," Castiel said, earning a sharp look from Sam who'd been checking the load in his clip. "I need you to take Dean while I distract Zachariah."

"Where? Is he in Chicago?" Bobby asked before they could both disappear. Trapped in a wheelchair there wasn't much he could do in a fight, but he sure as hell could drive the van to the place and supply them with some get-away wheels. There was no way the angel would be able to 'air-lift' the three of them out of… wherever Dean was.

"Spear Woods, in the old Grimes house," Castiel said mechanically, reciting back what he'd heard.

"I'll be there in twen—" Bobby said as he figured the fastest way to get there. It didn't matter though. "—ty." He was already speaking to an empty room.

* * *

><p>Dean wanted to tell Zachariah and his smugness to fuck off and die, but his throat kept closing in on him, convulsively swallowing water that was no longer there. The ring gag, trapped between his teeth, had cut a gouge in the corner of his lips and now that he no longer had tons of water sliding down his face, Dean could feel something warmer trickling down. Blood.<p>

"I gotta say," the angel spoke softly, finger coming up to swipe the trickle of blood off Dean's face. "There is a certain… justice to us meeting like this. I mean, I've wanted to ripe you apart for a long time now, but Michael might've frowned upon it, ruining his vessel and all that," he went on, smiling to himself as he took in the scene. "But this… this is perfect."

"Phmmk opph," Dean tried anyway, just on principle. It didn't matter that he had been on his way to meet Zachariah in the first place; it didn't even matter that, now that the dick angel was there, Dean could finally say the Yes he'd been rushing for since he'd left Sam. If he could just skip the middle man, it would be fine by Dean, especially when the middle-fucking-man was getting off on seeing him half dead.

"Was that a 'yes' I heard, Dean?" Zachariah asked, mocking Dean's attempt to speak. When Dean looked away, tired of seeing the never ending smugness on the angel's face, Zachariah grabbed hold of his cheeks, pressing the flesh so hard Dean could feel the ring gag bite deeper into his lips. "Because this conversation _will_ end with you saying that one word, you waddling ape. I don't care if you still have all of your teeth, or your eyes or whatever the hell this lunatic decides to do to you next, but you're not walking out of this without Michael inside of you."

* * *

><p>Sam looked up at the abandoned house, high roof cut clean against the moon-lit sky. With the vines and leaves covering its façade, it looked like a hairy beast gone through a washing machine's spin cycle. "Dean's in there?" Sam whispered without turning back.<p>

Castiel was behind him, Sam could hear the soft flapping of his trench coat in the night's cold breeze. When no immediate answer came, he looked over his shoulder.

The angel's eyes were closed and his head was canted to the side. While it was a familiar pose, Sam was never sure if, when Castiel did that, he was listening to something just outside human ear's range or if he was the person's soul he was looking for, like a divining rod for the spirit.

"Inside the church," Castiel said, eyes opening to fix on the mostly-still-standing building to their left. Being the smaller structure, Sam had barely cast a glance in its direction when they'd arrive, but now that he was looking more closely, he could see the stained glass windows. "Zachariah is in there as well and…" the angel stopped himself, looking in the opposite direction, "we are about to have company."

"The followers?"

"Yes," Castiel confirmed. "I believe Zachariah's performance before has… inspired them."

Sam almost rolled his eyes at the thought of Zachariah inspiring anything but contempt in anyone. Almost. "There's only two of us… how the hell do we do this?"

The smile that Castiel gave him reminded Sam so much of Dean's that he felt a chill race up his spine.

* * *

><p>Diaper-man came back. Distracted by Zachariah's glee, Dean hadn't even noticed that he'd been gone in the first place.<p>

Dean wanted to scream and shout at the man, tell him that he was being fooled, that Zachariah was using him and would not lift a finger when his soul was delivered to Hell's door instead of Heaven, but neither of them seemed inclined to remove the damn gag from his mouth. His jaw ached from the prolonged extension.

"I believe his demons are ready to come out now," Zachariah said, throwing a knowing smile in Dean's direction even though his words were aimed at the madman.

Dean struggled against his bindings, weakly jerking against rope that had no give. His muscles felt paralyzed, locked in that awkward position as if they no longer remembered what their use was. Anger built inside Dean's chest, escaping through his open mouth in a guttural groan. He knew what was coming next. He'd known it ever since he'd seen those jars filled to the brim with eyeballs.

"Don't worry… I won't let him take out both eyes," Zachariah whispered to Dean's ear. "Just the right one, I think."

Dean bit against the metal ring to stop himself from tearing his own throat out in failed growls of hate and helplessness. He couldn't tell if the angel was bluffing or not. After all, there wasn't any damage that diaper-man could do to Dean's body that Michael couldn't fix, but… his eyes…

The decision to let everything go and allow Michael to use his body like he was a pair of socks had already been made in Dean's mind; he'd made his peace with leaving behind those he loved, made his peace with giving up his freedom. But he had planned to do it in his own terms, at his own pace.

Pay a visit to Lisa, maybe throw some ball with Ben; explain his reasons to Sam and Bobby even if it was simply in a scribbled note; make sure that his baby and his meager possessions, like dad's coat, the keys to the Impala and his favorite gun, found their way to the few that knew how important they were to Dean.

And one last sunrise.

It was as cheesy as a dripping double cheese big burger, but Dean didn't care about it one bit. Sunrises were important to him.

When most of what he'd hunted all his live lived in the night, the sight of the sun rising in the horizon was the one sign that always told Dean that he'd survived another day, that his job had been done right.

How could Dean see one last sunrise if Zachariah let this lunatic take away his eyes?

"Do you wish to...?" Diaper-man asked, tentatively, like a child offering the last cookie even though he's salivating over it. The glint of metal coming from the scalpel in his hands was as far away from a cookie as Dean could imagine though.

With a sick feeling to his stomach, Dean realized that diaper-man was offering Zachariah the chance to pluck Dean's eye out himself.

The angel looked at the sharp instrument, the hint of temptation in his eyes. "I'm only here to supervise," Zachariah eventually said, eyes scanning the room feigning his lack of interest. "Carry on."

Dean's struggles redoubled. He couldn't feel his broken wrist; he couldn't feel the skin breaking around his bindings or the taptaptap sound as his blood dropped to the wet floor at doubled speed. Pathetic sounds of pleading escaped his mouth as the man grabbed hold of Dean's soaked hair and held his head steady, blade nearing his right eye.

Dean froze. The scalpel was so close that if he as much breathed to deeply, the blade would pierce his eye.

Using his knees once more to trap Dean's head, diaper-man used his free hand to pry Dean's eyelid back, exposing as much of the right eye as he could.

The sting of tears that flooded Dean's eyes and rolled profusely down his cheeks, could have been blamed on the forced exposure, on the dusty air, even on the man's foul breath hitting him full in the face.

Dean knew better than that. He was scared; he was terrified.

As the first blood was drawn, Dean could no longer fool himself. Zachariah was going to allow this to happen and there was no one else there to help him.

* * *

><p>"You lied to those people," Sam whispered, watching the group of followers dim in the distance. "You looked them right in the face and lied through your angelic teeth."<p>

Sam was kind of impressed, actually. Castiel had stood his ground, opened his wings and announced that the Good Shepherd wished for all of them to spread the Good Word to those imprisoned. A high sacrifice to ask, certainly, but who better than them? All they needed to do was find the nearest police officer and tell of their actions. The Lord would provide the rest.

Sam figured that, save for the kids, those people would all be in prison come morning. He couldn't find it in him to pity a single one of them.

"I've been practicing," Castiel said. "Dean once said that if we really want something, we must lie," he said in all seriousness, like he was reciting an ancient prophecy written in stone. "And I really wanted for none of them to interfere in what we need do next."

Sam smiled sadly. Only Dean could totally corrupt an angel through loyalty. "How are we getting inside?" he asked. There was only one way in that he could see and busting through the front door wasn't exactly his idea of stealth.

Sam's answer came in the shape of a faint air displacement and the next thing he knew, the crisp, cold air of outside had been replaced by thick, dusty and moldy air.

The second his eyes stopped scanning the room for his brother and landed on the pale, extended body near the front of the church, Sam stumbled back a half step. He couldn't even recognize Dean at first.

Too thin, his brain told him; too pale and most of all, too terrified. That could not be his brother.

When Sam could no longer deny that the whimpering body surrounded by a strange man in a loincloth and Zachariah was in fact Dean, he had to cover his mouth with his hand to stop himself from gasping out loud.

"We must hurry," Castiel said, so faintly it was almost telepathy. "Can you deal with the human?"

The angel's question was more about whether Sam could he deal with his own raw emotions rather than wondering if he could defeat the all but naked, skinny man. Castiel had been there when Sam had taken on Alastair and won and that had been a proper challenge.

Recent history hadn't been kind to Sam's increasing worry and anger. With Alistair, they'd been there in time to rescue Dean, but only just. It had been close. Too close, and the physical damage Dean had suffered in the end, had taken a toll on Sam emotionally.

"I can take him," Sam supplied, hands closing into fists.

The man in the linen cloth whispered something to Zachariah, head bowed in submission as he extended his arm. He was too far for Sam to see what he was holding, but the angel's reply echoed through the empty church. "Carry on," Sam heard crystal clear.

Sam's stomach plummeted. "No…" he whispered as realization struck. Rather than take his brother away from that lunatic, Zachariah had decided to stick around to enjoy the show. His blood froze as the madman grabbed hold of Dean's face, the glint of a blade in his fingers.

The images of all of those victims with their eyes cut out came unbidden to Sam's mind. "No…" his whisper became more audible. Without another thought, the gun was in his hands and he was standing.

The shot rang like a bomb going off in the enclosed space, closely followed by the flapping wings of scared crows flying away.

By the time Sam realized that he'd fired, he was expecting to see the Exorcist's dead body on the floor. The gesture might've been unconscious, but his aim was always true. And he'd been aiming straight at the naked man's bald head.

Instead, the madman was staring right at him. Everyone was staring right at him.

The madman with surprise.

Dean with relief.

Zachariah with a mocking smile. Lifting his hand, he opened it. Sam watched as something metallic fell from his palm followed by the soft ping of the spent bullet hitting the stone floor.

"Shit," Sam whispered to himself. He'd blown their only advantage. Surprise.

"I should've known that wherever little Deanny is, his lamb is sure to follow," Zachariah teased. One flick of his fingers, and the gun was ripped from Sam's hands. It landed with a metallic clatter, somewhere under the pile of crates, on the far side of the church.

Castiel charged the minute the other angel's attention was on Sam. He was silent as a comet traveling through space, equally deadly and unstoppable. The angel blade in his hand cut through the air, elegant and powerful, aimed straight at Zachariah's throat.

But Zachariah was somehow quicker. With one hand up he grabbed the blade, stopping its trajectory before it could strike his neck. "And the obedient dog too, of course," he mused and pulled the sword out of Castiel's grasp with a strong jerk. "You really should learn to pick on someone your own size, Castiel."

Everything after that happened too fast. Zachariah flung Castiel against the wall with such strength that the whole structure shuddered. Before Sam could lock eyes with the friendly angel, his body lost contact with the floor and he too was flying through the air.

One of the ceiling beams, solid piece of wood that it was, rushed in his direction and Sam barely had time to brace himself before his midsection impacted with it. A "ooph!" rushed unbidden out of his chest, as his lungs forcefully emptied and everything turned dark for a few seconds.

When the world regained focus around him, Sam could see Castiel, trapped like he was, against the ceiling beam in front of him. Directly bellow, Dean was staring at them, tears blinking out of his eyes as he realized that his rescuers were as deeply screwed as he was.

"Go on," Zachariah's peevishly tone echoed through the place. "Don't let these morons distract you from your task."

* * *

><p>Dean would give anything, <em>anything<em> to have Sam and Castiel not witness what was about to happen.

When the gun had gone off, even before seeing him, Dean knew it had been Sam firing. It was Sam's favorite gun, the one he used whenever he got the chance and Dean had heard it discharge so many times that he could recognize it's blast in the middle of a firing range.

Dean hadn't been able to stop the wave of relief that had washed over him as he realized that, somehow, against all odds, Sam had found him. Just in the nick of time.

The big brother in him, however, was dying of worry. Surely Sam hadn't been foolish enough to come alone into a situation filled with unknown players, right? Cass had been with him when Dean left, so he hoped that the angel was still around to give Sam a hand.

As if in answer to his prayers, Castiel leaped out of the shadows, his face calm and unexpressive as he thrust a blade in Zachariah's direction.

Dean realized that he was going to fail seconds before Zach snatched the sword from the other angel.

He wanted to scream at Sam to run, to get away from that place before they all ended up dead, but he had neither the time nor the means to say a single word. All he could do was stare as everything fell apart around him.

Because of him.

Soon, the idea of being saved was nothing but a fading dream. Castiel rose in the air, trench coat lifting like a set of wings, until he was trapped against one of the ceiling beams.

Sam soon followed, matching set of rescuers staring down at Dean. And Dean had no choice but to stare back, to see the despair and pity and failure taking hold of one set of blue eyes and one set of greenish-blue.

Dean's vision mercifully unfocused as diaper-man resumed his task and grabbed hold of his right eyelid once again.

"I'll fucking kill ya!"

Sam. Screaming from above the words Dean had been dying to say ever since he'd been gagged.

"Let him go, you sick fuck!" Sam went on, face read and neck taut from the force he was putting against the invisible bounds.

"Don't make me cut off your tongue, boy," Zachariah said quietly, menacingly. "Because, trust me when I tell you, that Dean will not appreciate eating it when I shove it down his throat."

Sam was livid with rage, having nothing but his mouth to run off and attack Zachariah and crazy-man, but Dean could see his brother biting his bottom lip, forcing himself to stay quiet and not cause Dean any more trouble.

That was the only reason why the angel hadn't killed Sam and Cass, Dean was sure of it. Insurance, in case Dean felt uncooperative even after his eyes were cut out.

"You are an embarrassment to our kind," Castiel spat out, struggling hopelessly against the hold the other angel was using to keep him pinned. "An abomination, as twisted as Lucifer himself."

Dean was sure that, if he had the power, Zachariah would've turned Castiel into 'chunky soup' right then and there for that accusation. But Zach was no archangel, he just worked for one.

"You know what?" Zachariah said, his face red with anger even as he played it cool. "He is leverage," he said, pointing at Sam. "You... I don't really need."

With a snap of his fingers, Castiel was surrounded in light before his vessel's body was sucked away. Banished, much in the same way as the blood spell they'd learned from Anna worked.

"May I proceed?" diaper-man asked in a low voice, not daring to interrupt while Zachariah vented his anger.

"Why did you even stop?" the angel said, annoyed at the delay. "Get on with it," he signaled, hand flapping disdainfully in Dean's direction.

First lesson Dean had learned from Alastair had been in human anatomy. The demon had spent years teaching Dean about every muscle in the human body, carving entire strings of flesh to show him how long and strong an _adductor__longus_ really was; how the _deltoid_ muscles were named for their triangular shape: that no matter how much of the tongue was chopped off, whatever portion left could still taste bitterness...

That to effectively cut out a human eye, without turning it into mush, it had to be popped out so that the nerves at the back could be reached with ease.

Alastair had spent a lot of time practicing that on Dean's eyes. They were pretty, he used to say. Still so... human.

It was the scooping that freaked out Dean the most. Like popping an oversize zit. Diaper-man did it with ease, the practiced movements of someone who'd done it way too many times.

Dean screamed. A long, guttural and feral scream that bounced from wall to wall until it came back to Dean's ears.

After that, everything blurred. Literally and figuratively.

Even out of its place, Dean's right eye could still see. Unfocused and blurry, but it was still working. The skewed view was nauseating, disturbing.

When diaper-man started severing the optic nerve, Dean was almost grateful. Until the pain really hit.

Somewhere at a distance, Sam was screaming too. But all Dean could deal with was the burning pain in his eye and the long, flesh-eating scream that erupted through his throat again.

Dean had expected to see nothing to his right side once the eye was cut out; the lightning flash followed by a complete darkness that enveloped him, were a complete surprise.

* * *

><p>"Stop! God... please stop!"<p>

Sam screamed until his voice gave out. His muscles, struggling against thin air, had given out long before that. He didn't even mind that there was a fifteen-foot drop to the ground if he succeeded in escaping Zachariah's hold, that he would probably break his neck if the angel let him go.

Sam just wanted to get his hands around that skinny man's neck and squeeze until he heard bone break.

From above, he could see everything in detail. High definition to the goriest channel on TV.

And Dean was the star of the show.

When his brother's body went limp, Sam feared the worst. The other victims had died under duress, their hearts giving out from the pain.

And Sam could not imagine worse pain than having your eye cut out while you were conscious and fully aware.

Bile rose anew to his mouth. Sam swallowed it, fearful that if he let it go, he might hit Dean instead of the two dicks torturing him. God! that man had cut Dean's eye out and Zachariah had just stood there, watching with a pleased look on his face.

Sam couldn't understand the reasons behind the angel's actions. After all, Dean had fallen into this mess when he was about to say 'Yes' to Michael.

Was Zachariah doing this just out of spite? Some sort of twisted vengeance because Dean had taken too long to give him the answer he wanted?

The man in the linen cloth moved away from Dean's side, bloody eye in the palm of his hand, and placed it reverently inside a glass bowl on the floor. The organ just sat there; green orb vacant and frozen on the last image Dean had seen and Sam had to look away. He could tell that the man was not done yet. Sam couldn't watch as he mutilated Dean again.

The sounds of angry voices make Sam turn his gaze once more to what was happening below him.

"It is my duty to finish," the mad man yelled, for a moment forgotten of whom he was talking to. "You must let me finish, or this will all be for naught!"

"I said one is enough," Zachariah yelled back, looming over the smaller man. "He's learned his lesson for now. Your job here is done. Cut him loose and leave us," the angel ordered. "Your services are no longer needed," he added in a cordial tone of voice that told of how much he didn't care for what humans wanted or thought.

"But his soul—"

"Is my concern now, not yours," Zachariah let out, his patience running low. "Scoot."

For a moment, Sam was sure that the Exorcist would continue to insist until Zach got fed up and killed the man. He would've liked to see that.

Instead, the serial killer that had the entire Chicago PD chasing after him and a flock of followers thinking that he was better than the second coming, held his tongue and did as Zachariah commanded. Like a well trained puppy.

It was pathetic.

Sam watched in silence as the naked man released Dean from his bindings and removed the hideous contraption that was keeping his mouth wide open, even in unconsciousness. When he placed Dean on the floor of the church, head to the altar and his body along the central corridor, Sam couldn't even be sure that his brother's chest was still moving.

Zachariah paced around Dean's body, fixing his tie, victorious smile on his face. He looked like an enormous peacock, grooming his feathers for a big date. Or a lawyer, getting ready for his final speech.

Which... didn't make any sense to Sam. Why would Zachariah need any further persuasive methods to make Dean agree to let Michael in if that was what Dean seemed to want all this time?

It hit Sam that Zachariah might've had no idea that Dean wanted to say 'Yes'. He hadn't been there when the angel arrived, but if Dean had had that thing in his mouth since then, he wouldn't have been able to say a single word.

Or maybe, Sam figure with growing hope, Dean had in fact recovered his senses and changed his mind on the matter.

Either way, they needed to get out of there.

Sam had no idea how far Zach had thrown Cass, but he figured it was up to him to do something to get Dean away from there. Dean had already lost too much –and Sam was trying really, really hard to not think about the bloody hole where his brother's eye used to be- and, although Zachariah had put a leash on that lunatic for now, there was no telling when the muzzle might be coming off again.

Looking around, taking advantage of his bird's eye view. The place was mostly taken over by debris and trash; there was a dead snake a few feet away where Dean lay that made Sam really not want to consider how long it had been there and whether or not it been alive in Dean's presence at some point.

Sam spotted his gun, lying almost on the other side of the room.

Castiel's sword, the only thing that could really kill an angel, was forgotten, discarded under the skewed pew where Dean had been just minutes before. It was the closest weapon Sam could get to, but he needed to be on the ground for that first.

"So this is how low you've stooped?" Sam called out, trying to draw Zachariah's attention away from his brother, to distract him. As long as the angel was focused enough to keep Sam pinned to the ceiling beam, there was nothing that he could do. "Getting serial killers to do the dirty little work for you?"

"We each play our part, Sam," Zachariah replied, looking up at his captive. "And once Michael has his vessel, you'll get to play yours as well, don't you worry."

"Dean will never say yes," Sam stated. It wasn't as much as a bluff, playing on the fact that Dean seemed to have already made his decision, but on Sam's knowledge of his brother. He trusted Dean; he knew his brother. And hew was sure that, once the despair had stopped blinding him, Dean would do the right thing. "I trust him."

Sam just hoped Zachariah gave his brother enough time to see reason.

"Yapyapyap," Zachariah mocked, his hand quaking as he went. "There's no shutting up with you Winchesters, is there?"

Sam opened his mouth, just to prove to the angel just how right he was, and was surprised when nothing came out.

"Much better," the angel sighed, turning his attention back to Dean. The tip of his spotless shoes poked against Dean's ribs, hard enough to almost roll the hunter over. "Quit stalling. I know you're awake. Time to play twenty questions."

* * *

><p>Sam's voice was like a beacon of light inside the dark pit Dean had fallen into. He was drawn into it, lured into a false sense of security. If Sam was there, things couldn't be that bad, could they?<p>

The surge of pain that hit as soon as Dean's brain connected with his body was almost enough to send him back to the dark.

Dean's face was on fire and he could feel every muscle along his back and thighs screaming in agony. His stomach felt heavy and full, like the world's biggest belch was just waiting to come up. Even his chest hurt, gurgling, stabbing pain that hit with every short breath he took.

The nagging sense that Sam was in as much danger as he was kept Dean from slipping back into the sweet numbness of unconsciousness.

Sam's voice seemed to come from far away, like he was on top of a tower, whispering to someone down below. Zachariah… Sam was talking to Zachariah.

Scratch that. Sam was poking at the angel, trying to get him pissed. And yet, amidst the taunting, there was a degree of unmoving faith in Dean that seeped into Sam's every word. Sam believed, _trusted_ that, despite all evidence, Dean would still say no.

The fool.

Slowly, the overwhelming sensations that every fiber in his body was trying to shoot at once, receded enough for Dean to realize just how screwed they were.

No matter how good it had felt to see Sam come to his rescue, despite all odds against that happening, Dean wished for nothing else but for his brother to _not_ be there now. Not now.

That had been the whole reason why Dean had left in the first place, getting as far away from Sam was he could before calling Michael. Despite the fact that Dean knew it to be the right course of action, their _only_ course of action, Sam's presence complicated things.

For one, there was no guarantee that Zachariah wouldn't kill Sam, or worse, force him to call Lucifer and set the final battle right there and then. It was a risk neither of them could take; a risk the world could not afford.

A pointy shoe buried itself in his ribs and Dean groaned.

"Quit stalling. I know you're awake," Zachariah's grating voice sounded from above, punctuating his poking foot. "Time to play twenty questions."

"Fuck off and die," Dean gasped out, enjoying the feeling of being able to use his voice again. He could still feel the rope around his wrists and ankles, but his limbs were no longer tethered. Free to move, at last, but still with zero chance of convincing his spasming muscles to do their work and get him out of there.

Dean wanted to open his eyes and scowl at the angel, he wanted to look up and see his brother, he wanted to find out why Cass was so silent. But the feeling of having his eye cut out was too fresh, his whole face burning with white hot pain and the sense of _emptiness_ where his eye used to be was more than he could handle. Despite the fact that his left eye still worked, Dean couldn't bring himself to use it.

"Do you really think you're in a position to do anything else but lick my shoes, boy?" Zachariah let out, anger getting the best of him as he pulled Dean up by his short hair until he was on his feet. "Now, the way I see it, you have two choices here," the angel went on, pacing the floor around a wobbly Dean. "You can continue to be stubborn and I call that maniac back and he can finish his job, in which case you die and I have full control of your soul. Or, you do the smart thing, we call Michael and I'll even fix your missing eyeball for you... as a bonus."

"You're all heart, anyone ever told you that?" Dean spat, left hand flying out to grab on to something, anything to keep him standing. The blood rush as he got to his feet had been bad enough, but without the benefit of looking around and centering himself, Dean was just growing dizzier and dizzier. Zachariah, prowling around him, voice direction always changing, wasn't helping matters one bit.

"I'm tired of this game... what will it be, boy?"

Dean bit his lip, hand finally connecting with cold stone as he found one of the church's pillars. Somewhere above, Sam was watching him, Dean could feel it. "I have some conditions."

Zachariah's steps paused. Dean could practically hear his eyebrow rising. "I'm sure that won't be a problem..."

"I need your word Sam and Cass walk free out of here," Dean started.

"Done," the angel said without even pausing for consideration. Dean wasn't sure if that was because his requests were that obvious and expected or because the angel had no intention of keeping his word.

"There's also a few people I want you to make sure stay safe once the battle starts," Dean went on. In between the darkness and the echoing walls, he felt like he was in a confessionary, admitting to all the people that he cared about and feared for. "Bobby, Lisa and her kid, Missouri—"

"If you're thinking about naming everyone you've ever met, think again. Those are quite enough," Zachariah cut him short. "So, what's your answer?"

Dean had the word in the tip of his tongue, ready to be spoken, but only silence followed. Somewhere at a distance, a can rolled out. If he listened very carefully, Dean could hear the disgruntled sounds Sam was trying to make but failing for some reason. "The answer is yes," Dean said with a heavy heart. "But not before I see and talk to my brother one last time."

Dean was sure the angel was going to say no, that he was going to tell him to buck up and stop stalling already. Instead, there was a sound of snapping fingers and the pain in Dean's face doubled.

Screaming, he fell to his knees, gasping, hands flying to his eyes. He was sure he would taste fire when his fingers touched his face, but instead, it was two mounds he could feel with the tips of his fingers, both eyes moving beneath his eyelids.

When he felt confident enough to open his eyes again, Dean found himself staring straight at Sam.

His brother's face was washed in tears.

tbc


	6. Epilogue

THE EXORCIST

EPILOGUE

Dean wanted to say so many things to his brother. He wanted to say goodbye, he wanted to say 'I'm sorry', he wanted to say 'you have no right to judge me'.

He wanted Sam to understand that this was his choice and despite all the crap that had happened to bring the two of them to that place, Dean's resolution was still the same.

But he said nothing.

The world was coming to an end, Lucifer was getting stronger by the minute and they were powerless to do anything to stop him. They had two choices: either give up, roll over and wait for the end like everyone else, or Dean could use the one weapon that they had at their disposal; the only one that was sure to finish Lucifer off.

But Dean knew his brother. For Sam, there was no difference between both options; both meant giving up. And he wasn't wrong.

It was just the body count at the end that differed from one to the other and Dean was sure as hell going to do his best to keep it as low as he could.

Zachariah was speaking, weird words that Dean recognized vaguely as Enochian. Calling Michael to the stage.

After all, it was show time.

Despite the fact that the sun was barely up, there was a bright, white light flowing from outside, seeping through the windows and cracks on the shaking walls. It wasn't pretty or even awe inspiring. It was terrifying, like a tsunami-size wave of energy from which there was no escape.

Zachariah smiled, victory splattered all over his face. "Finally, the day arrives," he whispered to himself, seeming to relax now that his job was done.

Dean looked at his brother, knowing that it would be the last time he would see Sam. God… he hoped it would be the last time, because seeing Sam again after this day would mean that Sam had said yes to Lucifer and they would be meeting to fight to the death.

Dean was all for Michael killing Lucifer, just as long as the devil wasn't wearing Sam's body at the time. Anything but that.

Sam's mouth was open, lips moving as he formed silent words. As the world shook and came loose around them, Dean moved closer. He wanted to hear, he _needed_ to know what Sam was trying to tell him.

A blur of flesh jumped in between the brothers and Dean found himself staring at diaper-man rather than Sam.

The sight of the person who'd spent the past days torturing him was startling and Dean fell back, landing on his ass. He was staring at a being wearing nothing but a linen cloth, but the face was no longer that of a bald, skinny man; it was Alastair's fangs, Alastair's spikes and horns, Alastair's colorless eyes that Dean saw staring down at him.

"I must finished what I started," the vision of terror said. "I must free your heart and save your soul!"

Dean's eyes were drawn to the man's hands as he swung the axe he was carrying. On pure instinct, he rolled to the left as the axe came crashing down, aimed at the spot where Dean's chest had been just seconds before.

He didn't stop to think how close that had been. He could barely rationalize who was trying to kill him: a demon who was supposed to be dead, a man off his marbles or an overzealous angel with the ethics of a scorpion. At the moment, all Dean could figure was that Sam had been trying to tell him something and Dean hadn't caught it.

Dean shook his head, bracing himself with both hands on the floor as the whole room dipped and dimmed around him. Shaking his head had been a really bad idea. Like a TV with bad reception, Alastair's face flickered and twitched, diaper-man's gaunt face replacing it every so often.

The dirt and trash on the ground regained focus as Dean stared down, everything jumping and bouncing like the whole place was made of jelly, losing structural integrity the closer Michael came.

Michael was coming to claim him. And the guy in diapers was doing everything in his power to make sure that the only thing the archangel would find once he got there, was a bloody corpse.

None of that really matter to Dean now. Either way, these were his final moments. What did matter was the fact that he'd lost track of his brother in middle of the mayhem. In his heart, Dean hoped Sam had come to realize that Dean was a lost cause and that Sam had done the smart thing by getting out of there. Dean knew his brother however; for a smart guy, Sam usually did the dumbest things.

The axe was raised, ready to swing in his direction again and suddenly Dean was pressed with bigger concerns, like the fact that he had crawled himself into a dead end. Franticly, he looked around, searching for something that he could use to defend himself. Every thing around him was either wood or falling apart and he lacked the energy and strength to just jump to his feet and charge the attacking man before he could strike again.

For a heart-stopping second, Dean could see every detail in that axe's blade in crispy definition; the slight blue tint of the steel; the chipped piece that had probably broken off when it'd hit the stone floor; the trace of brown, old blood near the hilt, from the last person whose life it had taken.

Dean closed his eyes, knowing that death would be as swift as it would be brief. Michael was almost there, after all. Dean wouldn't stay dead for long.

It surprised him that he was able to hear the gunshot above all the noise around. Amidst the groaning wood, breaking glass, cracking stone and angelic high-pitched voice, the sound of one bullet leaving the barrel of a gun was crystal clear to Dean's ears.

He opened his eyes out of reflex, searching for the source of the shot. The gun, that one he knew well enough. Sam's gun.

There was a splatter of fresh blood on his face, and for a second Dean wondered why he felt no pain if he'd been shot. The blood, however, was not his.

Looking up, Dean realized that the bullet had hit diaper-man instead. There was a flap of flesh, hanging from the man's right shoulder, blood streaming fast and hot down his arm.

Sam stood in the other corner of the room, gun still up, trying to squeeze out another shot. A killing shot this time around.

Before Sam could fire again or Dean could get his hands around the fallen axe, or diaper-man could do anything more than howl in pain, Michael arrived to end all plans.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" Zachariah was beaming, face open in a wide smile, as his attention was kept solely focused on the archangel. Zachariah, patron angel of every boss' kiss-ass on this land.

There was so much light inside the small room that every thing else had seemed to disappear.

The church's walls seemed to vanish, Zachariah's form shrunk until he was nothing but a thin line of black and the madman in front of him... Dean looked in astonishment at the expressions crossing over the man's features as Michael touched down. There was wonderment at first, quickly followed by a sense of just reward and, finally, utterly confusion, as, unable to handle the presence of the archangel, his skin started to melt away, atom by atom.

Just a mere human, diaper-man realized too late, and one that didn't even registered in the archangel's awareness as he was reduced to dust in seconds.

Star dust, Dean caught himself thinking, as he looked at the sparkling particles that started falling down in the place where, seconds before a lunatic killer had stood.

"Dean."

A single word, and yet the entire room seemed to react to it, recoil and shy away.

It was the first time Dean was able to assimilate the fact that there was an archangel in the room, wearing nothing but his true form, and Dean was right there, staring at him, understanding his words.

Slowly, Dean got up. These were his last moments on Earth as himself. He would not spend them on his butt, shivering in fear.

Despite the bright light that annulled all else, Dean searched for his brother. He feared that Sam might've still been in the room when had Michael arrived, that he might have met a fate similar to diaper-man's. Dean shuddered at the thought.

"I believe you have something to say to Michael?"

Zachariah had sneaked over and now stood at his side. His grabby hands pawed at Dean's shoulders, a mocked support that served as nothing more than to keep him from bolting.

Dean shrugged off the angel's touch. More than anything, it irked him that, in the end, Zachariah had gotten what he wanted. After all the manipulation, after all the pain and death he'd brought on, Zachariah would triumph.

Michael was silent, looking expectantly at Dean.

He looked like nothing Dean could have ever imagined. It was like staring at an Aurora Borealis that stood inches away.

Zachariah had once boasted that his true form had a bunch of wings and animal heads. Dean figured that was supposed to be impressive, amongst the small-change angels.

There were no animal heads in what Dean was seeing and the archangel's wings were made of the very fabric of time.

Michael was regal. He didn't so much fill the room with his presence, as he did pull the room into him, like a vacuum. A black hole.

Michael was a black hole of pretty colors and Dean couldn't help thinking about what it would be like to be sucked into that.

"Don't be afraid," Michael whispered, even though an entire wall came down with the sound of his voice.

What happened next, Dean would never know if Michael did it on purpose, to somehow reassure him or if it happened because, at some level, they had begun to merger as one already and the archangel could not prevent it.

One second Dean was inside a room falling apart, the next he was outside Bobby's salvage yard. Faster than the blink of an eye.

Dean looked down on himself in confusion. Instead of the ripped up boxers, Dean was wearing his usual jeans and shirt. He had no idea why he was there or what had happened in between.

"YES, OK? YOU HEAR ME, YOU SON OF BITCH! I SAID YES!" a deep voice screamed into the night.

Sam.

That was Sam's voice and even without seeing his brother, Dean could read the despair in his broken tone.

Dean wanted to run. He knew what was happening and he knew he would be too late to stop it, but still Dean felt that he had to go to Sam and... do something!

His body didn't move an inch forward. Instead, he shot upwards, an impossible jump that went higher and higher and higher until Dean realized that he wasn't jumping at all. He was flying.

The deep seeded fear he'd always had of planes and machines in general that served solely to defy gravity and transport people from one place to another, was absent when he was the one doing it.

He couldn't feel them move, but Dean knew that wings were somehow involved in the equation. He knew the concept alone should be freaking him out, but he couldn't seem to care less.

Everything looked tiny from where he was, but Sam was easy enough to stop. His brother was standing under a lamplight, walking in skewed loops, whiskey bottle dangling from his hand like a leash without a dog.

"Where are you?" Sam half sobbed, half screamed at the night. "I'm here! I'm ready!"

Sam took one swallow of the bottle and tossed the empty thing against one of the car carcasses lying around. It bounced off the hood, landing somewhere in the dark.

Once more, Dean tried to move his uncooperative body. Once more nothing happened. He was just sitting there, like a crow perched on a high balcony, watching the scene.

"This is not how I'd envisioned our reunion, Sammy."

The voice was quiet, gentle, but even so it startled Dean. Lucifer, still wearing Nick, was standing right beneath the lonely lamppost. He bent down to pick up the empty bottle, disapproving frown on his melting face. "Not that I'm complaining," he went on, hands up, looking as harmless as the devil can, "but what made you change your mind, Sam?"

"Screw you," Sam spat as an answer. "Screw you and your brother! Screw my brother too, while you're at it!"

Lucifer nodded, acting like Sam had politely answered him. "Dean said yes, didn't he?"

Sam seemed to deflate where he stood, six foot plus of man shrinking to a little kid's size. "I told him I couldn't do this on my own," he whispered almost to himself. "I told him... but he wouldn't listen."

Dean was listening. He was listening now. And all of a sudden Sam's words he hadn't been able to hear inside the church were crystal clear and so obvious.

Sam couldn't do it alone.

The same way Dean couldn't either.

Dean wanted to scream at his brother that he finally understood. That he now knew that the only way to defeat Lucifer was for them to stand together, but his tongue was just as disobedient as his body.

"I know, Sam," Lucifer cooed. "Older brothers always have a hard time listening to their siblings. But Sam... we can end this, right now, right here."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, wiping the wetness from his red eyes.

"Michael's here," Lucifer said. "Now."

Suddenly, they were both staring right at Dean and Lucifer smiled. "Hello, brother."

"Let's do this," Dean heard Sam say faintly. "My answer is yes."

"NO!" Dean screamed, hand reaching forward as if that could somehow stop the words from leaving Sam's mouth.

Zachariah was staring at him like Dean was sort of lunatic. "'No', what?" he asked carefully, the menace clear in his tone.

Dean took a loud, deep breath. He was on his knees, back at the church and instead of Sam and Lucifer staring at him, he had Michael and Zachariah doing the same. "No... I've changed my mind," he said very quietly. The glint of metal caught his eye and Dean extended his hand while watching the veins pulse in Zachariah's temple.

"This is no time to fool around, you dumbass," he all but screamed, grabbing the ropes dangling from Dean's wrists and pulling him up. "It ends now!"

At the last possible second, Dean's fingers curled around the angel sword that Castiel had dropped and thrust it up. The blade buried itself in the soft spot beneath Zachariah's jaw like the angel was made of melted butter.

The look of surprise on the angel's face mirrored Dean's. He hadn't planned the move; he hadn't expected it to work; neither of them had any idea that a human could kill an angel.

And yet...

Dean pulled the sword out and like a cork that had been holding the angel's grace inside, light poured out through the gaping hole it left behind.

Zachariah fell back, hands flying to his throat as if he could stop the inevitable from happening.

The explosion of light that followed as Zachariah gave his final breath was lost in Michael's presence, but Dean knew the angel was dead. The imprint of one of his burned wings had hit straight across his arm.

"That was only one of the possible futures, Dean," Michael, who had silently stood and watched as Dean killed his right hand angel, told him. He sounded more sad than angry and for the first time, Dean felt something other than hatred for the archangel. "I am sorry you witnessed that."

"I'm not," Dean said, feeling stronger now than he had in months. "I know what I have to do now."

"So you think," Michael said. "But you're wrong."

Dean grasped the sword tighter. Whether or not it would work as easily on an archangel as it had on a lesser angel, he had no idea, but he'd sure find out if Michael took another step closer.

"We'll meet again, Dean Winchester," Michael said, the colors that composed his being shinning more brightly for a few seconds. "Soon."

It was a supernova's explosion after that. All Dean could do was cover his head with his arms and curl in on himself.

Far, very far away, Dean thought he could hear someone shout his name.

* * *

><p>The last thing Sam was able to see was the silhouette of the Exorcist losing consistency until it disintegrated into a mount of dust.<p>

Michael was in the room and the sound of his voice was as overwhelming as the bright light that was consuming everything in its path.

The only thing Sam could think of, however, was that Dean was on the other side of the church and that, between them, there was an archangel that had descended to Earth with the single purpose of getting himself a Dean-suite.

Sam tried his best to get to Dean's side, to do everything in his power to stop Dean from doing this, from saying Yes.

Already, deep inside himself, Sam could feel the bottomless pit of helplessness that he knew would engulf him completely the second he found himself alone against Lucifer.

Before, when he had been cocky and filled to the gills with demon blood, Sam would've wanted nothing more than a chance to go one-on-one against Lilith, Lucifer, Godzilla or even God Himself.

He'd been a deluded fool, he knew that. If anything, Sam now knew that all too well. He couldn't do this alone.

He needed Dean by his side.

Sam thought Dean had understood that when he called him back and told him that they would go after Lucifer together. When he had told Sam that Sam kept him human the same way Dean kept Sam human.

The fight and Zachariah's manipulations had made Dean forget that.

"NO!"

Dean's voice, screaming the one word Sam had feared would never leave his brother's lips.

Sam redoubled his efforts to get near Dean, but it seemed like every piece of rubble in the room had drifted to stand in his way. The fact that he couldn't see a damn thing didn't help either.

There was a gasp of pain coming from the other side and Sam's heart froze. It had been too faint and short for him to figure if it'd come from Dean or not, but the odds... were not good.

Before Sam could convince his feet to move again, the high-pitched sound that had faded to an almost whisper, grew in scale once again. Hands flying to his ears, Sam had no choice but to stand still and hunch down, waiting for the moment his ears couldn't take it any longer and exploded. He bit into his lip, longing to reach Dean but powerless to move.

Suddenly, the already too bright room exploded in a flashing light that, no matter how tightly Sam squeezed his eyelids, still reached his eyes. "DEAN!"

Then, as fast as it'd come, the light was gone. The change in brightness was so sudden and drastic that Sam was blind for a few seconds. Everything was black, a smoothing darkness that announced the danger had passed.

Sam was on his feet as soon as he could distinguish shapes and forms well enough not to brain himself against the nearest wall.

"DEAN?"

The silence that followed the ear-piercing noise was heavy and filled with dread. For a moment, Sam actually hoped that he'd gone deaf and that was the only reason why he couldn't hear anything.

The linen cloth that Sam had seen wrapped around the Exorcist's privates was curled on the floor, like a white snake ready to strike. Next to it, a black book.

Too curious to leave it behind, Sam picked the small item up and gave it a cursory look. He was expecting a Bible of sorts, given the cover and shape of the book. Inside, however, the pages were covered in gibberish. Most of it was English, some Latin and even a few words Sam could recognize from Spanish. The writings, however, made little sense in any language he tried to read.

Putting the creepy book away, thinking that the cops would be thankful when it eventually found its way to their hands, Sam moved along, carefully scouring the rest of the debris. Last he'd seen Dean, he'd been right about...

Sam saw Zachariah first.

The angel was dead, burned wings nothing but shadows of ash in the ground. His face, frozen in the last expression he'd worn in life, was filled with surprise. Sam wondered who had put that look on the angel's mug.

The thought lost interest the moment Sam spotted his brother. "Dean!"

There was no time to fear the worst. Dean's breathing was loud enough and wet enough that Sam could hear it as soon as he was close enough.

Moving faster than light, Sam was by his side in a flash, hand flying to Dean's neck like drawn by a magnet. The pulse was there, strong enough for Sam to find it at first try, even if it was beating fast enough to worry him.

Reassured that his brother was still in the land of the living, Sam paused long enough to have a good look at Dean.

He was soaking wet and there was an angel sword, grasped tightly in his hand.

Looking back at the gaping hole in Zach's throat, it was easy to put two and two together and figure out who had surprised the angel.

Dean had killed Zachariah.

The human, barely able to stand on his own, who had been starved and tortured for a week, who had given up on everything, had killed an angel.

Sam could bet that had stung harder than the bite of the blade.

Pushing aside any thoughts of how Dean could even do something like that, Sam chose to concentrate on how he was going to get his brother out of there. Dean was in need of medical attention and there was a whole city in between that abandoned place and the motel room where they'd left Bobby.

"Could really use some help right about now, Cass," Sam grunted as he bent down to pick Dean up and placed him in a fireman's hold. His brother had lost some weight during his imprisonment, but fortunately not enough to make him an easy carry. Sam was going to be almost glad for _that_ back pain.

Sweat gluing his hair to his eyes, Sam advanced half blind towards the front door only to realize that it was bolted shut with a heavy beam. "Shit!"

Before Sam could come up with an alternative to get out, or even consider trying to squeeze them both through one of the cracks on the walls, the sound of a car horn reached his ears.

"What t'hel—"

It was pure instinct that made him jump out of the way of the van that came speeding through the front door.

The air filled with dust as wood beams split and landed awkwardly wherever they could. Sam was forced to cough out a lung before his eyes could adjust to what he was seeing. And when they did, he had a hard time believing it.

"Hello, boys," Bobby's smiling face said from behind the wheel. "Need a ride?"

* * *

><p><em>One week later<em>

"Antarctica?" Dean let out chuckling, even though the concern for why Castiel wasn't back by his own means yet was plain to see in his eyes. "Gessh, when Zachariah's pissed, he really, really sends you away. When's he gonna be back?"

Sam was still staring at the phone. After a week of silence and subsequent worry-filled hours wondering where the angel might be, Castiel had called. From McMurdo Station. "He can't," Sam sighed, teeth worrying his bottom lip. "He called us to ask for money for the plane trip back."

"What?" Dean let out, putting down the sandwich Sam had brought him. One raised eyebrow from his brother though, and Dean picked it up again. Even after this time, Dean's stomach was having some trouble keeping down any reasonable amount of food, which, in Dean's case, was damn tragic. He _liked_ eating!

"He tried to use his angel... stuff, to get back, but nothing happened," Sam explained, eyes watching like a hawk as Dean finished the rest of his food. "Whatever Zach did to him, it fried the rest of his _mojo_."

"Well, good thing that dick isn't around to cause anymore trouble," Dean talked around his full mouth.

Sam stared at his brother. They hadn't really talked after... well, after everything that had happened.

Just days before, it had been impossible to keep up a conversation; weak and in pain, Dean just hadn't been able to stay awake for more than half-hour periods. Then, the nightmares had started, slamming into him full force and any rest he'd gotten had stopped being restful. Sleep deprived, Dean had been in such a fowl mood that talking to him was akin to poking an angry bear with a very short stick.

Even now, little more than a week later, the nightmares hadn't exactly disappeared. Sam kept awake, waiting for the sounds of Dean's restlessness during the night, wanting to be near by and wake Dean before his brother could hurt himself, but he'd been quiet for the last couple of days. Odds where, Dean had found the stash of alcohol that Sam and Bobby had hidden in the house.

To his shame, Sam felt kind of relieve for that. It wasn't like he could help Dean with whatever memories he was struggling against in his dreams, not when his brother clammed shut like a high security vault, but it was easy enough to guess that the whole experience with the Exorcist had only served to bring closer to surface all the Hell stuff that his brother had been trying so hard to keep at bay. If drinking while still taking painkillers and antibiotic was what it took to stop the whimpering and the pained gasps and the aborted screams, Sam could turn a blind eye to it. He knew Bobby felt the same.

It was during those quiet times, while Dean slept, that Bobby and Sam had talked. And theorized. And planned.

Mostly to keep themselves busy and one step away from going completely insane.

There was the matter of Dean killing an angel and surviving to tell about it. Dean wasn't talking about it and that was frustrating enough, but the fact that and there was no precedent that they could research to know what that meant or whether it could be done again, left more questions than answers.

There was the matter of Michael, coming and going empty-handed without so much as a leveled city; but, again, Dean wasn't talking about it and short of calling the archangel to find out why the hell he'd chosen to be nice to Dean, Sam and Bobby had nothing left but wild suppositions.

And mostly, there was the matter of why Dean had changed his mind. Try as he might, Sam could not come up with a satisfying answer for that.

As far as he knew, one minute Dean was dead set on saying yes, ready to throw away everything they had worked for, and the next he was back on board with Team Free Will.

There was a huge gap separating those two points, but Sam was pretty sure that his brother would never give him a straight enough answer to connect those dots.

"... Bobby is gonna be pissed when he sees that bill, but really, it's not like we can leave Cass—"

"Dean," Sam cut in, having barely noticed that his brother had been talking all this time.

Dean went quiet, eyes scanning Sam's face. These days, it was like he could smell when a serious conversation was coming and promptly made his escape. "This sandwich was awesome. I'm gonna grab me another one of these. Do y—"

"You know at the church," Sam started before Dean could bolt. "You never got around to tell me what made you change your mind."

For a second there, Sam was sure that his brother was going to ignore him and go away just the same. For more than a second, Sam was positively sure that Dean hadn't changed his mind at all and was just waiting for the right opportunity to get in the car again and drive off.

Dean did neither, though. "I, ummh," he said, voice raspy with emotion that ended in a painful sounding cough. He looked Sam straight in the eyes for a moment, before shifting his gaze from Sam's face to the pulled string on the couch's cover. "Zachariah's smug face, to be honest," Dean went on, a smug smile of his own finding its way to his lips. "Couldn't stand that guy boasting to everyone how he'd bent me to his will. Sounded way too kinky for my taste."

Sam wanted to call bull, wanted to remind Dean that he was a lot of things, but petty wasn't one of them, and that there was no way Sam would ever believe that such an important decision had been taken on a who's-the-bigger-dick basis. "So, like a five year old, you didn't eat your soup because the grown ups was telling you to?" Sam asked, playing along.

"Damn straight!" Dean offered with a smile. "Five year olds' know it best."

Sam could only shake his head. It would be easier to fly to the moon on the back of chicken than getting an honest answer out of Dean. Not about this anyway. Never about something as important as this.

"Hey, Sam?" Dean called out after a moment. Long enough for Sam to believe that the 'moment' was over.

"What? Want another sandwich?" Sam offered out of habit, an odd one he'd picked up after learning that his brother had been starved for a week. "I think there's still some peanut but—"

"Back at the..." Dean paused, the memory of the place still taking him straight back to the hands of the Exorcist. "Back there, just before that crazy fuck jumped on me and tried to finished what he started," he went on, words coming out of his mouth shyly and deeply measured. "You were trying to tell me something..."

Sam blinked. He hadn't even realized his brother remembered that. The world was coming down on them, Zachariah had been in the process of calling Michael and Sam had been sure that he was going to lose his brother. A deep honesty that could only be born out of despair and loss had made him blurt out the words that had been heavy in heart for months. "_Don__'__t__ leave __me __alone,__"_ Sam had screamed at Dean then. _'__I__ can__'__t__ do__ this__ with out__ you__'_.

It hadn't been cheap blackmail or even a cheesy throw-away line, carelessly blurted out in the last ten minutes of a movie. It was just _facts_, even if Sam had spent a long time trying to ignore that knowledge.

Without Dean there to remind Sam that there was still hope, that as long as they had each other, they still had _something_, Sam couldn't keep on fighting. If Dean had said Yes to Michael in that church, Sam feared he would've ended up saying the same to Lucifer, sooner rather than later.

"I guess I was trying to warn you," Sam eventually said, making it look like he was having trouble remembering some non-important moment in that crazy sequence of events. "After all, there was a crazy-eyed, naked man running towards you with an axe."

Instead of laughing at his lame joke, like Sam had hoped Dean would do, his brother merely smiled and gave him a knowing look. In an odd, chilling way, the gesture made him feel like Dean was inside his head.

"Yeah... I think I've had it up to here with crazy, naked men," Dean agreed, getting up to join Sam. "Come on... let's make that sandwich happen. Together."

The end

* * *

><p>AN: First off... DO NOT KILL ME! The fact that I jumped a week ahead in the story's timeline has a reason. A very tasty reason.<p>

**Jackfan2**, my beta, who happens to be one AWESOME writer, is treating us with a comfort laden special story that will cover the moment from when Sam and Bobby drive away to the dreaded 'one week later'.

So, stay tuned for that add to the story somewhere in between the end of this week and the beginning of the next :))))

My deepest thanks go to my friend jackfan2, without whom this would all be crap and who, despite her busy life, found the time EVERY SINGLE WEEK to go over this so that you guys could have a chapter a week.


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